


Chuck Versus the Soulmate AU

by WritingsOfStardust



Category: Chuck (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, episodic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-28
Updated: 2020-04-14
Packaged: 2021-02-25 20:41:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 71,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21591652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WritingsOfStardust/pseuds/WritingsOfStardust
Summary: Soulmate AU. Daniela is working her ass off to build her reputation as an excellent independent journalist. An invitation to a national security conference in Los Angeles takes her to Burbank just in time to meet Chuck Bartowski and discover that some secrets are best kept hidden... inside the brain of a living person as a series of images encoded with classified data that many people are willing to kill for.
Relationships: Chuck Bartowski/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

She wondered what she looked like for a moment, standing in a Harlem complex with her thick-soled boots, camo-colored cargo pants, and a tight-fitting grey tank top stained with dirt, grime, and sweat and in need of a good machine wash. Daniela may have blended into New York, but only because New York was for everyone, and everyone could blend in somehow.

The door opened into the small, dimly-lit apartment of her long-time friend. "Dan," Joanna said, looking confused. She had the door open barely enough for her to peer her face through, and from behind her the journalist could hear a television still running and smell something meaty in the oven that made her mouth water.

"Hey, Jo." Daniela shouldered her duffel, a relatively small weight which had become a burden after such a long walk. "I know this is last-minute. Can I crash?"

Joanna sighed and stepped back. "I didn't even know you were back in the States." She closed the door and pulled the rusted gold chain to grant entry, then tugged the door open wider for Daniela to come inside. "Did it get too boring for you on the other side of the world?"

"Too hot, mostly," she said, stepping inside and trying not to breathe in the smoky apartment smell too deeply. "A little violent, too. Lost a contact."

"I don't want to know."

"You probably don't," Daniela agreed, putting her plain black duffel down by the door and locking it up herself. "You cooking something?"

Joanna nodded slightly, dark brown corkscrew curls tied up and her impractically large silver hoops brushing her shoulders. "Chicken's in the oven, it's nothing great."

"How long?"

"It has another twenty minutes to bake." Her old friend wrinkled her nose. "Good thing too, because you need a shower. You reek."

"Thanks," she replied sarcastically. "Tell you what, how about _you_ bake in hundred-degree weather and then we'll see who smells like roses."

Joanna ignored the barb. This wasn't the first time that Daniela had made a last-minute house call, and they more or less knew what would happen next. They had never been very close or emotional with each other and it was for the best. It made it easier to come by, enjoy the visit, and leave quickly. A shared dormitory at Columbia six years ago left them with a friendship neither could seem to shake, no matter how little time they actually spent in communication.

Daniela rolled her shoulders and bent down to take off her boots. She was already dreading the smell of her socks. "I need a shower, a washing machine, and dinner."

"You _really_ fucking need the shower," Joanna commented again, pinching her nose and backing into the cluttered little kitchen. "What do you want with the chicken?"

"Anything but oatmeal," Dani replied, licking her lips, practically salivating at the thought of filling up with fats and carbs. "Potatoes, salad, chopped fruit, hell, another chicken, I don't care." She wiggled her toes. Her socks were discolored and she reconsidered – maybe they should just be thrown out and replaced.

"Aren't you needy," Jo grumbled, looking through the cabinets to see what she had for a side dish. Daniela left her to scrounge up a more filling meal and let herself into the bathroom.

It had been far too long since the traveler had gotten to soak in a long, hot shower. Her own shampoo had run out days ago and she squirted out some from Joanna's bottle, then accepted the luxury of conditioner while she scrubbed what felt like seven layers of sweat, dirt, and peeling, sunburned skin off of her body. Daniela was used to roughing it. She had to be, for her work. That didn't make it any less sweet when she got to feel the pounding water against her sore back, or the cool chill of bathroom tile underneath her bare feet. Yes, she bathed while she was in Iraq. No, she didn't have a water heater or half the water pressure.

Following the release of more al-Qaeda propaganda, Daniela had returned to the Iraqi deserts for almost three weeks. She interviewed American soldiers stationed in the al-Anbar province on the fighting on the ground and the conditions of their deployment. She exercised her Arabic on her own and with the company of United States allies in investigating uses of violence against civilian populations by militants and radicals. The tensions between the Sunni and Shi'ite factions were running high and the proselytizing of Bin Laden and his followers was not helping issues.

Daniela was meant to conclude her visit with an interview of an Iraqi ambassador, but the embassy in Baghdad urged her to return sooner than she had anticipated after an American security company opened fire on Iraqi citizens. She was used to risk, but she agreed that her stay had run its course, and arrived back in her home country two days later. There was enough anti-American sentiment already. She had enough new information to sift through to last for a while, at least until her next assignment.

As an investigative journalist, Daniela traveled across the world on assignments and independent expeditions. She had started her career early on, using college as a time to develop a linguistic repertoire and a writing portfolio. Study abroad excursions created global contacts and after working for a news reporting company for three years, she had decided to branch out into independent work.

It was a hard slog, and freelancing was difficult enough domestically. Being successful meant being at the top of her game, and sometimes that meant spending days and days out in scorching heat under unforgiving sunlight. She winced at the redness in her skin.

As the filth sloughed off, so did the tattoo cream on her arm. Daniela rubbed at her inner wrist underneath the spray of the water until the cream was all gone and she could very clearly see the two names underneath, one in angular, sharp cursive letters and another with long, connected, tilted strokes. She paused for a moment to stare at her arm, licking her chapped lips while water streamed from her flattened fringe over her nose and cheeks.

She gave herself just a few seconds to look at her soulmates' names in their respective handwriting and wonder what they were doing. Then she turned her arm over and scrubbed hard on that side, too. Cleanliness was a virtue.

* * *

Almost three thousand miles away and on the opposite side of the country, Chuck Bartowski rattled a heavy flashlight to prompt the beam to stay on. The light stayed, but it also dimmed and cast long, gangly shadows over his ceiling. The line of light coming from under his bedroom door was brighter, as were the lights from the courtyard which filtered towards his open window.

Hiding in the bedroom was one thing. There was nothing silly or immature about retreating to an abode of safety when confronted with a trap, which was what the entire courtyard was: an elaborate, loud, and very social trap. Trying to escape out the window, which was visible to the courtyard, was slightly different.

"Morgan, this is a bad idea," he voiced aloud in a hushed whisper while his best friend tied together the ends of pillowcases to create a linen line.

"Well, we can't stay here, Chuck!" Morgan hissed back, tying one end of the line of pillowcases around the leg of the table beside Chuck's bed and draping the other out the wide window.

"I'm uncomfortable with the plan," Chuck objected, glancing again to the bedroom door. "A-and we're on the first floor, you don't need to climb down the building…" Morgan was going to rip all of his pillowcases, and it would be for nothing.

"Plan?" Morgan raised his voice incredulously, grabbing the flashlight from Chuck's hands and jumping up out of his crouch. "What plan? This is survival!" Morgan tucked the flashlight underneath his chin and pulled on a pair of black, fingerless gloves.

A knock on the bedroom door made Chuck flinch where he sat with his back to the wall. The light from underneath was blocked in two spots by a couple of feet. Morgan spooked like a horse and dove for the window, clambering to get his right leg over the ledge.

"That's her! We've been compromised!" Morgan leaned as far to the outside as he could and whispered loudly, "I'm a ghost!" as he teetered over the edge and fell out of the window. His grasp on the pillowcases tightened and the line swung a little, but Morgan's body hit the ground outside with a low thud.

The bedroom door cracked open and the nerves in Chuck's chest rose. "Morgan, you can't leave me like this!" He called quietly, flinching away from the light. The only response he got from his fellow escapist was a low, uncomfortable groan.

The overhead light in the bedroom flicked on. Chuck blinked at the brightness and turned his head to the side meekly, ashamed. His sister stood in the doorway and put her hand on her hip, exasperated, as she took in his defensive huddle and the pillowcases hanging through the window.

"Chuck?" She started, patience thin. "What are you doing?" Ellie sounded like she knew perfectly well what he was doing, but she was giving him a chance to explain himself and not look like a total coward. In principle, Chuck appreciated the opportunity; in practice, he couldn't think of a way to make it work.

"Uh… escaping?" He smiled awkwardly to placate her.

"… From your own birthday party?" Ellie confirmed, giving her eyes a roll and crossing her arms.

Morgan popped up from the other side of the window, on his knees. "Hey Ellie!" He exclaimed, pretending to be casually surprised to see her. "Wooow, you look fantastic!"

"Uh…" He felt bad when his sister looked at him like that. She had been really excited to put together a party and introduce him to people. "You know, sis, the thing is," he uncomfortably tried to explain without making himself feel pathetic or her feel bad, "Morgan and I don't really feel like we're fitting in… at my birthday party…" Ellie sighed, uncrossing her arms, and looked at him sympathetically. "Uh, 'cause we don't know anybody, 'cause they're all your friends, and they all happen to be doctors."

"Yeah," Morgan agreed vehemently, backing him up. "Doctors who don't really get our jokes."

"They're your jokes," Chuck quickly corrected. He'd jump off a cliff for his friend, but he did not want the credit for some of the things that came out of his mouth.

"Okay, my jokes," Morgan agreed again, happy to take the credit. _And all the more to him,_ Chuck silently thought.

"Chuck." Ellie clasped her hands in front of her stomach like she was going to beg. Just like that, Chuck knew he was going to end up back in the thick of the party outside. He had a hard time turning down Ellie when she asked so earnestly for something. "I have invited real, live women. For you." Although he was going to have to learn to turn her down if she kept trying to push him into a date. "So please, let's go." She stepped out of the room and held her arms out impatiently for him to get up and come with her.

Morgan sighed with an attitude of someone who was only grudgingly compliant. He leaned his torso in through the window and started to swing one leg back inside.

"Morgan, you stay here," Ellie quickly ordered, waving a hand at the salesman like she wanted him to get lost and then walking away from the bedroom.

"Oh." Morgan looked down at the windowsill as he straddled and tried to pick his foot up off the carpet, leaning back and getting uncomfortably stuck with one leg in and one leg out. He wasn't the most flexible, and Chuck suspected the only way he'd be getting in or out was by taking another dive.

Chuck stood up and ran his hands through his messy, curly hair. The next couple of hours were going to be a disappointing failure, he was sure. Even if he did meet one of Ellie's friends who he wanted to talk to, none of her accomplished, successful, smart female friends were exactly in his league. Most of them were doctors, nurses, surgeons, and therapists who worked at the hospital where she was completing her residency. He worked at an IT desk in a chain electronics store that employed people like Jeff and Lester.

"Need a hand, buddy?" He offered to Morgan as the short man looked in and out of the room, seeming to decide which direction he wanted to fall in.

Morgan waved him off, concentrating on the carpet versus concrete debate. "No, no, no. I'm okay, I'm alright," he said, rocking to one side and finally deciding on toppling over to his right, back onto the concrete outside.

Chuck rubbed the back of his neck, pulled the pillowcases back in, and shut the window before leaving his room. It was in Morgan's best interests.

* * *

It wasn't long after her shower that Daniela was sitting on the beaten-up couch Jo had bought off of one of her fellow tenants, eating a cheap dinner on a paper plate with plastic silverware. Jo brought out two cans of beer and put one between Daniela's knees, then sat on the floor in front of the television with her own paper plate. She had a metal fork for herself.

"No real dishware?" Daniela asked between mouthfuls of chicken and instant potatoes smothered in butter.

"No real house?" Joanna snarked back.

Dani relented and kept eating. The chicken was burned on one side, but even the burnt, blackened, and thick parts tasted more nutritious than most of her meals in the past two months. She scraped her teeth over her fork to drag off a leaf of spinach or cabbage with it and speared more of the salad onto her silverware before eating more meat. The salad was really just a spring mix Jo found in the back of her fridge, starting to wilt.

She didn't even touch her beer until her chicken and potatoes were both all gone. The coolness against her hand almost burned, and the first sip nearly made her gag. Beer was an acquired taste Daniela never fully learned, but she was thirsty enough, and it was cold enough, that she didn't complain. Willpower alone pushed her to finish the salad instead of getting up and finding more meat.

Jo was only halfway through her food, eating more leisurely and sipping more often. She kept watching Daniela eat. "I knew you were poor but I didn't realize you were starving," she commented, sending a look at Daniela through her eyelashes while she bent her head down towards her plate. "How long has it been?"

The journalist thought about lying by omission, just telling her friend she had been in Iraq for a couple of weeks, but Daniela wasn't really interested in lying to one of her few long-term friends and honestly, she didn't think she had the energy to withhold information at the moment. She was dying to crash and it killed her that she had to be leaving for JFK in just a couple of hours. No time to nap, and barely enough time to wash and dry all her clothes.

"Nepal, a little more than three weeks." Daniela put her plate aside to throw out when she was ready to stand up. For the moment, she felt like her stomach was going to burst from eating so much, so fast. "India, almost ten weeks. Iraq, two weeks."

"What were you doing in India so long?" Jo nursed her beer and leaned backwards against the television stand. The table it rested on was thick, heavy, and sturdy.

"Delhi for three weeks doing recon on organ trafficking," Daniela admitted freely. Jo made a face and reminded the traveler why, exactly, it was okay to share with her old roommate. "Uttar Pradesh for nearly two months after, undercover to check out debt bondage under the guise of _koliya._ "

" _Koliya?"_ Jo asked simply, drawing a knee up more comfortably and wrapping an arm around her bent leg.

"Labor contract system, it's older than this country," Daniela summarized briefly. "Not great but it works."

"Until it doesn't," her old roommate remarked, pulling the sharp aluminum tab off of her beer to mess with, scratching an empty spot on her paper plate.

"Until it doesn't," Dani agreed. If it still worked all of the time then there would have been nothing to go see. "But in that assignment I spent weeks eating thick bread and plain rice on strict rations every day. Sometimes lentils or beans, if I was lucky. Maybe ground roots."

"Shit, man, doesn't sound like anyone can even survive on that."

"And yet thousands do," Daniela pointed out. She had no anthropological training, but she appreciated the integrity of cultural anthropology and sociological study. In her assumed identity, she spent those weeks living just like one of the bonded laborers before her associates paid to buy back her working contract and got her out without watchdogs coming for her skin. She had to live what they lived, see it for herself, or else she couldn't truly, honestly, and accurately write on what was happening to thousands and thousands of people just on the Indian subcontinent.

She wasn't stupid, she knew that writing about it wouldn't fix it overnight, but it would show people the problems that exist and become a resource for organizations and individuals looking to help those people who were trapped in awful living situations, sometimes for generations at a time. It had been awful living that way. Her hands were still healing from the long days of hard labor and she wasn't going to forget anytime soon the misery and pain of hunger cramps seizing up her abdomen in hundred-degree weather.

Dani drank more of her beer and paused for a moment as the cold and bubbly drink both soothed and irritated her sore throat. It was hard to believe she was really back in the States. It would take a couple days for the surrealness to fade - probably about as long as it would take to kick the jetlag.

She stretched out her legs across the length of the couch after moving her trash plate. Her legs had mostly healed of cuts and bruises but had tanned significantly in the sun while she was away. Her underwear left much of her thighs visible, including the tan line where almost all of her pants had at least gone to her knees. She looked a little stupid, half rich caramel and half pasty and pale. Her muscles ached and sang in equal measure as she stretched them out. Cramped economy trans-Atlantic flights were not the luxurious welcome home she might have dreamed about.

Jo understood what Daniela didn't say out loud and she finished her food in silence, kindly giving the other woman a few minutes of respite. She shut her eyes and listened to the quiet sounds of Joanna's fork scraping her plate occasionally, extra conscious of her damp hair slowly air drying on her shoulders. The air-conditioned apartment felt wonderfully cool, and if she hadn't still been sitting up, Dani might have fallen asleep on the couch.

Jo crunched her beer can in her hand when she was finished. Dani left her half-finished drink on the coffee table and took both of their plates to the kitchen trash. It was the least she could do after imposing, she figured.

"I can't stay long," she warned Jo, giving her apologetic eyes. It wasn't very polite to swing in, use the shower and laundry, eat her food, and get going again, but she didn't have a choice. She would have stayed a couple days, time permitting. "I have a flight to Los Angeles that leaves before eleven."

"Aren't you a busybody," Jo murmured, still sitting on her carpet. "What's in Los Angeles?"

"North Atlantic Treaty Organization is having a conference on post-9/11 security and counterterrorism," Dani explained. There was no harm in giving out this bit of information. It was public knowledge, and Dani herself didn't have any of the confidential, juicy gossip. Yet. She had connections and the conference was a couple days away still. "I have an invite."

All that college networking and hard work since were paying off. When she had first gone independent, she wouldn't have been able to afford or manage a long-term assignment in Canada, much less India. She was getting places. Slowly, but… getting places. This conference was going to give her an in for writing on her blog as well as selling pieces for publication to news networks, particularly in combination with her relevant studies and data from abroad.

"Okay," Jo said, blinking a little. "Still not really my playing field." Joanna graduated a year before Daniela with her degree in anthropology. They had bonded over a couple of classes in common, but Jo's target career and Daniela's fieldwork landed in very different areas. She straightened out her leg. "How long have you got?"

"An hour and a half," she estimated, sitting back down on the edge of the couch and leaning forward, elbows on her knees. "I have to repack and I have some things I probably don't need to take, if you want to do a little bartering."

Jo nodded slightly and stood up, putting her hands on her lower back and leaning as far behind her as she could without bumping into the TV or the low-hanging shelves on the wall. "Clear off the table and dump your bag, let's get you ready to go first."

* * *

In another life, maybe Ellie would have been an event planner. The courtyard looked more festive than he had ever seen it, toeing the line between tastefully colored and overly cluttered with decorations like electric lamps and streamers. Small, collapsible tables covered in white tablecloths held assortments of food and drink. Even the fountain was in on the action, with ribbons dipped in the water and draped over the stone edge. Chuck tried not to think about how impersonal his own party felt. He knew maybe four people by name, including his sister and her boyfriend.

Ellie steered him by his shoulders from their front doorstep. Her hands were gentle but Chuck was pretty sure if he tried to escape, he would feel her pink-painted fingernails. The thought made his fingers twitch, wrapped lightly in thin gauze after too much time with his PlayStation 2 controller.

If Chuck had been left to his own devices, he would have skirted around the people and gone to one of those tables. No one was expected to make small talk when they had chips in their mouth. Ellie knew him well enough not to give him the chance.

"We're going to be _social,"_ Ellie emphasized, pushing him onwards, towards the courtyard from their apartment. "You are funny, you are handsome-"

"Thank you," Chuck offhandedly and uncomfortably replied. He scanned Ellie's friends, hoping maybe she had remembered to invite any of his. There were about thirty people in the courtyard, max – it wasn't very large. He saw her boyfriend talking to a couple of athletic-looking women and another man in a jersey. "Oh, there's Captain Awesome," he said, pointing with his hand down low.

Ellie groaned quietly. "Please don't call him that."

Hearing his name, Captain Awesome turned his head, saw Ellie, and excused himself from his smaller clique. Chuck was wistfully thankful for the way the other man's eyes lit up when he saw Chuck's sister. Devon was a surgeon with a taste for adrenaline – because, you know, it wasn't exciting enough to literally hold someone's heart in his hands – and met Ellie during medical school. Three years later, they were doing their residency at the same hospital and living in the same apartment (with Ellie's little brother… very romantic).

Devon reached for Chuck and Ellie relinquished her grasp on his shoulders, only so that Devon could take the reins instead. Chuck withheld a sigh and let the jock push him forward instead while Ellie kept in stride with her soulmate behind him.

"Okay, I've identified some candidates for Chuck, and they are _awesome_." Ellie sighed when she was reminded how her partner earned his moniker and Chuck sighed at how the two spoke about him as if he weren't there. Awesome drove him straight towards a small group of three conversing women as if he didn't see them at all. It was with some level of horror that Chuck realized Awesome meant for him to join their conversation. "Let me introduce you to Chuck, Ellie's brother!"

Chuck glanced at the concrete under his feet and invited it to open up and drag him far, far away if it so pleased.

"Hi, Chuck!" The woman on his far left said pleasantly, smiling, holding a glass of some red-colored drink with a lime wedge. Her dark ginger hair hung straight and complemented her suntanned face and the smattering of freckles over her nose.

The other ginger woman in the center reached her hand out and Chuck found himself shaking hands with a green-eyed beauty and hoping that his smile looked polite rather than completely awkward. "I've heard so much about you," she said, sparing a glance behind him at Ellie.

A hand roughly hit his back and Chuck withheld a big puff. Awesome's encouraging back-slaps were a lot rougher than Chuck's lungs would ever be used to. His roommates left him alone so he didn't look quite so pathetic, but part of Chuck wished they wouldn't go.

"Are you in a costume?" The third woman asked, a small grin on her face. Her curly blonde hair was gorgeous, streaked and highlighted almost naturally by the sunlight.

"No," Chuck answered, wincing, unsure which of them to look at. "I – I work for the Nerd Herd." The loose-fitting, long-sleeved white shirt paired with his nametag and employee badge hooked to the breast pocket made that pretty clear, and having one of Ellie's almost-definitely highly-educated and very successful friends just assume that it was a joke made what limited confidence he had shrivel up and hide in a dark corner.

The one with such pretty emerald eyes giggled. "Nerd Herd? That is so cute!" Her nose wrinkled cutely. "What do you _really_ wanna do?"

 _Turn the clock back five years,_ he thought, but didn't let himself say out loud. "Working on my five-year plan, just need to choose a font." Type font jokes always worked. Or, at least, they worked at the Buy More. They didn't earn him any points with Ellie's friends.

The blonde reached for one of his hands and gently brushed her fingers over his knuckles. "What happened here?" She asked in concern. "Did you hurt your hand?"

He knew they were trying to find an ice breaker, but his nerves got the better of him and before he really thought it through, he was telling the truth. "No, no, it's, uh, from Call of Duty, the controller chafes after several hours…" He trailed off, wincing. Chuck didn't believe in lying for a girl's attention, but he _did_ believe in omitting some details for the sake of his pride. He swore he used to be better at this.

The woman on his left, the redhead with the freckles, forced a smile after sharing a look with the other two that Chuck was pretty sure he wasn't supposed to notice. "So Ellie said you went to Stanford!"

He didn't have to be a surgeon like Awesome to tell that she was forcing herself to sound interested.

"Yes, that's technically correct," he confirmed and mumbled the second part.

"I graduated in '02!" Her eyes sparkled excitedly. The blonde finished her drink and the green-eyed girl touched her friend's arm to let her know they were going. "What was your major?"

"Engineering," Chuck said, grateful for the small mercy that she said _major_ and not _degree._

"Oh my God, I knew this _great_ guy!" She beamed and bit her bottom lip attractively. "He was an engineer, um, he ran track, and I think he was a gymnast, too…"

Whatever deity of mercy had smiled on him rescinded its kindness. Chuck looked down, embarrassed and bitter. "Bryce Larkin," he said, the old name tasting sour on his tongue. "He was my roommate." And best friend, and at the time Chuck had thought they'd be best friends for the rest of their lives, but it was amazing how quickly things could change.

When they were at college together, Bryce was the popular one and Chuck hadn't held a grudge for that, but now it was like Chuck had barely existed at all. All anyone remembered was how much they loved the guy who got him kicked out.

"Oh, yes." _Is that it?_ "What's he doing now?" _No, it's not._

"I think he's an accountant." Chuck fiddled with his hands, pressing his thumbs together and rubbing gauze on gauze.

"So." Chuck looked up, hopeful that they were moving on. She smiled at him apologetically, having realized that, for whatever reason, Chuck didn't like talking about Bryce. "Do you have a girlfriend?" She asked. The engineer – was he an engineer without his degree? – couldn't tell if she was flirting or just making conversation.

"Uh, no." Chuck hadn't had a girlfriend for a long time – four years – but oh, he missed the comfort of having a significant other. He wanted what his sister had. "I _did_ , a while back, at Stanford." Again, his mouth didn't know when to stop.

"Oh," the redhead faltered.

"Her name was Jill." Chuck reminisced to himself on her soft brown hair which had always seemed to shine and her matching eyes. One look from those sweet brown eyes and he'd been wrapped around her fingers. "We met freshman year."

"Oh," she said again. "That _was_ a while back."

Chuck glanced at her face and quickly looked away again. She didn't look happy, and Chuck didn't feel happy either, but he didn't know what else to talk about, and now that she had asked, he didn't know how to stop. The most interesting thing about him was how his best friend framed him for cheating to get him expelled, and people tended not to believe the guy who'd been expelled.

"I remember when I met Jill, it was in economics class." Chuck smiled a little at his hands. Bryce had been the one to introduce them – they were all in this advanced freshman-level course which had a lot of sophomores in it, too. "I was walkin' across the quad, and she had dropped her bag, and I was like, you know, rushing to – to go and pick it up for her, and uh…" Chuck tried not to remember Bryce's laughter as he teased them both for being clumsy. "We kind of did that whole, you know, like in a cartoon, we bumped heads. There was a whole gang of us, Jill, Bryce… we had so much in common then…"

Jill had been his girlfriend for almost two years, from mid-sophomore to mid-senior years, before she dumped him for the hotter, sportier, more sociable guy, and Bryce had been his best friend for almost four years before he ruined Chuck's life. They'd gone on group dates, Chuck and Jill, Bryce and whichever lucky girl he was attracted to that month, and Jill's friends with their miscellaneous boyfriends if any of them were dating. Bryce was a serial monogamist and Chuck never had to worry too much about impressing his roommate's girls because they were never very permanent; Chuck had given up trying to impress Jill's friends because they just thought he was hitting out of his league.

Chuck rambled for a bit about his story. He liked to talk about college because as painfully as it had ended, those were the best years of his life while they had lasted. And who wanted to hear about his life after Stanford, anyway? Thousands of dollars in student debt with no degree, working at an IT desk for just over minimum wage, still so hung up on his girlfriend from almost five years ago that he got too flustered to talk to beautiful women who tried to make conversation.

"So there I was: Jill with Bryce, me on a train home… Guess she thought he was more exciting." It hurt that Chuck agreed. Bryce _was_ more exciting. He looked up with a forced smile which he knew he'd gotten pretty good at over the last several years, but he was smiling at no one and talking to himself. He sighed softly and shook his head with a wry smile. "Shouldn't have mentioned Call of Duty," he said to make light.

* * *

After Jo said to dump everything out of her bag, Daniela did exactly that. Well, she took everything out and carefully laid it on the table, then repacked her essentials back into her duffel. Her laptop, cell phone, mobile charger, earbuds, and all chargers went back in, as did her small notebook and pen. She left her wallet out because it was part of the bartering game, and Jo helped her make a messy list of all the clothes she had currently in the washer and dryer.

"You're taking your underwear," Jo decreed flat-out, "And I'm not taking your socks."

Daniela made a face. She was planning on keeping her underwear, and no way was she actually offering her socks as a tradeable item. "Yeah, no duh," she said, crossing her arms. "I need clean socks and don't have time for a store. Cash it?"

Jo thought about it, doing a mental inventory of her own wardrobe, and nodded. She wrote a dollar sign beside "socks" on the list of clothes in the wash and they moved down.

"It's hot as hell in California, I need my tanks," Daniela started.

"Uh, not as hot as Iraq," Jo guessed, giving Daniela a scolding look, "And considering you're only packing one bag, you need _one_ tank top, and one shirt that you can wear in public." Daniela started to object to defend her tank tops and Jo cut her off. "You keep a tank, I keep the other, and you can borrow one of my blouses."

The brunette shut her eyes while she thought about it for a second. "Which one?"

"You can look in my closet," Jo dryly promised. "But nothing I paid more than thirty for."

"Deal," Daniela decided. "I'm keeping my cargo pants."

"Do you have jeans?"

"No," Daniela said honestly. Other than her cargoes and two pairs of shorts, Daniela didn't have any pants because there was no point in wearing more than the absolute minimum of clothing coverage in the deserts or sweltering fields. "But you can have a pair of my shorts if I can have a pair of your leggings."

"Okay," Jo acquiesced quickly. "But pick some jeans up when you get to Cali. You gotta have jeans for while you're in America."

"Okay," Dani replied, just as much in agreement as to get Jo to move on from the jeans.

Jo scanned the rest of her clothing list and made a face. "You really don't have much, do you?"

"I travel light," Dani said defensively. It saved her the cost of checking bags and the hassle of dealing with luggage. She checked the list Jo was updating and saw she now had her underwear, clean socks, cargo pants and shorts, leggings, a tank top, and a blouse. She did need a couple new bras, too, but she and Jo weren't the same size. "The jacket I have in the dryer, I want to keep it. I know it looks worn but it's comfortable."

"You already said it's worn, I don't want it," Jo snorted. "For that conference – you're going to need to dress nice." She pulled out a separate sheet of paper from her notepad and started making a new list with jeans and a dress on it. "But get that when you're there, and-"

"And sell it to you?" Daniela guessed.

"If you don't want to keep it," Jo confirmed. Daniela had had such a small closet over the last few years that when she bought something from necessity and only wore it a couple times, she shipped it to Jo and got a wire transfer or check mailed back to her. "I'm not even fussing with your shoes." Daniela loved her boots and despite several attempts from Jo to get something nicer looking, she refused to change them out, only to replace them with the same thing when they got worn down. The argument had died. "What else do you need?"

"Shampoo," Daniela said quickly. Jo made a face. "And a hairbrush."

"I have an extra brush you can take," Jo said, adding it to the first piece of paper. "But buy shampoo when you get there or use the complementary hotel bottle."

Daniela thought for a moment about the toiletries she needed to replace and figured she could get them all at a pharmacy in LA when she landed. The brush would be excellent, though – it would suck to go through TSA looking like she couldn't be bothered to take care of herself once her hair dried.

While Dani watched, Jo put makeup on her shopping list underneath a dress, as well as dress shoes. Dani grimaced but accepted the logic. Women were expected to wear makeup and be all pretty at events. _Welcome back to America, Daniela, have some sexist double-standards,_ she thought sarcastically. For all the debt bondage troubles she had put up with in India, they were surprisingly equitable regarding their treatment of women. Enslaved families needed all hands on deck against book-cooking, and they didn't have time to fuss about who was too delicate to do what.

"Anything else you need to go, girl?" Jo asked, reaching over and sipping from the beer that Dani didn't want to finish.

Daniela could buy chewing gum at the airport to deal with altitude pressure. "Chapstick?" She asked almost hopefully. Her lips were so dry that they hurt, and the sooner she could get something on them, the better.

"I don't think I have that exactly, but I'm sure I have an unopened lip balm somewhere," Jo reasoned. "It's yours."

"Great. Thank you." Daniela opened up her wallet and looked through her cash. Most of what she still had were rupees and dinars, not worth enough in American currency to bother converting when she returned. Behind her American debit cards, she had a few USD tucked away, and she pulled out her last twenty-dollar bill and put it on the table. "That's for new socks, a hairbrush, and lip balm. Oh, add ATM to that list, I need to get more cash."

* * *

With the sun dipping down below the buildings hemming them in, Chuck sat down on the edge of the fountain after trashing the colorful ribbons. Almost everyone was gone and he was beginning to relax. Another birthday was a failed celebration, but at least now he could stop being paired up with girls Awesome and Ellie thought he'd get along with.

He knew they meant well, and he appreciated what they were trying to do. Ellie thought he was lonely and Devon thought he needed a distraction, or maybe an inspiration. They couldn't control when he would meet his soulmate – if he ever would – but they didn't see any reason for him not to try dating again, and neither seemed to understand that he just didn't want to. Ellie saw Jill as the mousy brunette who dumped him _years_ ago – and for his _best friend_ on top of that. Chuck couldn't stop thinking of her as his first love, and did anyone ever _really_ get over their first love?

He hoped she and Bryce were happy together.

Well, no, actually. He hoped she dumped Bryce and was very happy with someone else while Bryce was left in the dust for once.

He unwound the bandages from his fingers and shoved them in his pocket to put in the trash, then flexed his fingers and looked at the reddened sores. He sighed. Twenty-six years old and he was working at a dead-end job he could barely stand, Morgan was still his only close friend, and he was living in an apartment with his sister and her boyfriend because he couldn't afford to live in the city on his own. Ellie kept saying it was time to move on, and he knew she was right. The problem was that he didn't know how. He may have been at rock bottom but there wasn't a rope to climb. And even if there were, he had been terrible at climbing the ropes in gym class.

Ellie saw one of her friends out and Devon folded up tablecloths and carried the tables back to the communal shed behind the complex. Morgan wasn't in sight, but the light from Chuck's bedroom was turned on.

His sister closed the gate behind her friend and came towards him. Chuck kept looking down at his fingers and listened to the soft trickling of the fountain at his back. It was soothing. Sometimes at night he opened his window to listen to the water. Ellie sat next to him and lifted her feet out of her shoes, rotating her ankles and curling her toes before slipping her heels back on.

"Thanks for the party," he said, looking up and smiling at her. If it weren't for Ellie, his birthday would probably just blend into the rest of the calendar. "Your seven-layer dip? It tasted like eight." He nudged his shoulder against hers.

"Chuck," Ellie said, smiling at him kindly, "Can I tell you something?"

"It really was eight layers," Chuck accused.

Ellie set her hand above his knee and gently squeezed. Chuck looked away from her and instead longingly stared towards the light in his window.

"Even though we may ask, no woman really wants to hear about an old girlfriend," Ellie advised. When Chuck didn't look back at her, she added, "It's depressing." Chuck sighed and dipped his head in acknowledgement. He supposed that if he met a lady he liked and she kept talking about her ex, he would be a little disappointed and uncomfortable, too. "Stanford was years ago. You need to move on. It's time."

 _It's time,_ Ellie said. She'd said it last year, and several times since then. She had said it every so often ever since the summer after his expulsion, when Chuck didn't have the drive to figure out up from down, much less get a job or pick up a hobby. She had said it so much that whatever authority she might have held with the phrase had long since been lost. Clearly, for her to say it again now, she'd been wrong every other time she'd said it, too.

"Do we really need to have this conversation again?" He asked her tiredly, hoping she'd give up. If she wanted to help him, setting him up with her friends wasn't how. He wished he knew what she could do, because if he did he would have told her in a heartbeat.

Ellie chuckled. "We've rehearsed it enough," she agreed.

It wasn't supposed to be a joke. "Right. I'll get over Jill tomorrow." Chuck stood up and hoped she wouldn't be annoyed that he didn't help with the rest of the clean-up.

* * *

Jo had a new car since Daniela had visited the last time, but that had been more than a year ago and she distinctly remembered Jo sending her an email several months ago that simultaneously praised a paper Daniela had gotten published and excitedly shared about her promotion. Her apartment was good for the price, but her car had been dead on its wheels, so Jo proudly declared it time for a new vehicle and apparently she had made good on that promise in the form of a used car which needed a new paint coat but ran smoothly nonetheless.

The traffic on the way to JFK was minimal for a Sunday night, and Dani watched New York City pass through the car window while listening with one ear to Jo telling her about the car. She supposed she'd probably have been this excited, too, if she were in a position to afford her own car. Daniela was making pretty good money off of her job, but as much of that cash as possible had to be reinvested while she built her reputation until more people were willing to hire her for jobs, until more people were willing to pay _for her_ to go travel and catch new, exciting, and meaningful stories.

New York had a feeling to it that Daniela had missed since she finished college. After choosing not to get her master's degree, the twenty-six-year-old bounced around between friends and family that lived across the country. When she started spending more time abroad, she was fortunate to have enough money saved that she could also afford cheap extended-stay hotels when the situation permitted. She would have liked to move back to New York, and maybe someday her job would permit it, but Dani was more dedicated to her job than she was to the beautifully lively city despite how deeply in love with its character she had fallen.

"So anyway, who did 9/11?"

The notorious date prompted Dani's wandering attention like little else managed to. No one could forget that day. It had been awful, and Jo knew of Daniela's close connection.

"Al-Qaeda," she answered instantly, turning her head around to look at the driver.

"And what year was my car made in?" Jo asked as a follow-up. Daniela faltered, realizing she didn't know and Jo had clearly noticed that she wasn't paying attention. The black woman huffed. "Dani, you could at least pretend to be paying attention, I _am_ delivering you safely to the airport."

"I'm sorry," Dani apologized, and repeated it twice quickly for good measure. "I was trying to listen. I didn't really catch myself zoning out. I know you haggled the old owner down almost two grand, that's pretty impressive, Jo."

"You're damn right it is," Jo proudly declared, and sent Dani a wink. "2002, by the way, that's the year of my car. What's your airline?"

After Daniela double-checked her booking and shared with Jo, the anthropologist followed the signs to the correct terminal and got into the drop-off lane. The cars moved forward slowly as people were coming and going, and Dani unbuckled her seatbelt and put the strap of her duffel over her shoulder so she'd be ready to get out when they came to the right set of doors.

"Do good, brat," Jo commanded, reaching over the console and swatting Daniela's thigh hard through the comfortable dark grey leggings.

"I always do," Daniela replied with a smirk right back at Joanna, responding to confidence with confidence. She considered leaning over the car and kissing her friend's cheek, but although Daniela was herself a fairly affectionate person, Jo wasn't as much, and they had never been _that_ close. "Thanks for the food, and the shower, and the ride."

"Thanks for using me like a pit-stop," Joanna wryly commented, rolling her eyes and pressing the brakes.

Daniela hopped out of the car swiftly and turned around. "I'll text you when I land," Dani assured, pushing the door until it swung shut and waving at Jo's car as she inched it forward in the line.

* * *

"Cheer up, Chuck, you can talk to _some_ women." Morgan's advice was easy for him to say – as long as he got laid sometimes, the man was happy. It was rare but it _did_ happen, although Chuck wished his friend didn't feel the need to share when he got lucky. "That's a start."

Chuck sighed and considered the merits of claiming he "accidentally" aimed at Morgan's avatar instead of one of the enemies but decided that since they were sharing a split-screen view, his pal would probably see him taking aim.

"I don't think my sister counts, buddy," he settled for responding. Unlike Morgan, Chuck didn't just want a girl to like him for a few hours – he wanted a girl to like him for a lot longer, and not to feel the need to block his number less than a day after meeting.

"Think of her as practice for when you meet, you know, Ella," Morgan suggested, taking out more of their evil insurgent opponents. Chuck reloaded his gun – whichever one had the longer barrel – and moved forward to check out the other side of the barn. The controller was already soring his fingers again.

"Yeah," Chuck acknowledged, and then stated firmly, "Since she's still _my sister,_ I'm not gonna do that." Ellie had been his best friend for his whole life. Daniela was going to be his best friend for the rest of his life – fingers crossed, anyway – but hopefully the relationship wasn't going to be exactly like the one he shared with his big sister.

He glanced at his wrist. With his sleeve rolled up to his elbow, the name on his skin stood out in a dark green, matching their owner's eyes. Daniela's signature was penned in feminine writing with sharp angles but long curves at the ends of her letters. In the time it took him to revisit his soulmate's name, his character took a knife to the shoulder or arm – he couldn't tell which, but his XP was dropping.

The monitor on his desk beeped, which stole Morgan's attention while Chuck repeatedly hit the attack button until his avatar had knocked out his assailant with the butt of his rifle. The small Hispanic crawled across Chuck's bed until he could lean over the edge and squint at the computer screen. Chuck paused the game while Morgan wasn't looking.

"Wow," Morgan said, leaning back and sitting on his calves. "A blast from the past, _wow._ Bryce remembered your birthday, dude."

Chuck internally groaned and wondered when the hits would quit coming. "What?" He said in disbelief. After everything that had happened, after the _five years_ with no communication, why would Bryce reach out? Why would he send a "happy birthday" email to the man whose life he ruined? It just about made Chuck mad so he tried to stop thinking about it.

Morgan wasn't very familiar with shocked rhetorical questions. "The guy who stole your girl, guy who got you kicked out of school, remember that guy?"

Chuck ground his teeth for a moment and sighed. Morgan didn't mean to make it worse. "Yeah, Morgan," he grumbled, putting his controller down and getting up off of the floor where he'd been sitting. "I think I remember Bryce."

"Alright, well, what have we got here?" Morgan eagerly hopped off the bed.

Chuck entered the password at his computer to open his email while Morgan watched. It wasn't a sophisticated password and he didn't have anything worth hiding on his computer, anyway. Bryce's email was bolded in his inbox, but it had no subject. Chuck clicked on it, expecting some generic line or something, but instead found an attachment at the bottom of the page.

He clicked on and the loading wheel spun for a few seconds before the file opened to a black screen in a full window. Morgan pulled out the desk chair and sat down in it, watching from the side. Chuck waited for something to happen. A vertical bar blinked in the middle of the screen for a few seconds before it started to type text in big letters against the plain black background: "the terrible troll raises his sword".

"Huh," Morgan leaned in, cocking his head and staring. "What is it?"

Feelings were complicated. Although Chuck tried not to feel much of anything for Bryce, he felt a fond nostalgia when he recognized the old type-based programming. "Zork," he answered, a little confused himself. Why Bryce would be sending him a copy of their unfinished pet project from way back when was a mystery. "Uh, you remember Zork, the old text-based video game? Well, Bryce and I programmed our own version of it back at Stanford using a TRS-80." It had started as a hobby, a way to study for one of their shared computer science classes, but it became something they had continued into the next year on their own.

"Wow," Morgan admired, fingers tapping on the desk like he wanted to reach over and take the keyboard. "You guys were really cool."

"Yeah," Chuck agreed absently. They may have been cool in the nerd clique, but they were still _nerds._ Computers were where the future was at, and in college, he and Bryce had shared the vision of using computers to make it in the post-microprocessor, post-Wi-Fi world. "Now if I could only remember what was in my hero's satchel…"

Five years made the memories fade. Their revamped game very closely followed the original Zork, but they threw in their own twists and shifted certain inventories around to personalize it. They had even considered writing a version in Klingon.

Chuck caught Morgan's eye roll in the reflection of the black screen and sent his friend a deadpan look. Surely Morgan, of all people, wasn't judging him. "The weapons that I would use to kill the terrible troll," he explained before the salesman made a joke about a man purse.

"Right," Morgan nodded understanding and put his chin in his hand, his elbow on the table. "You know," he decided, looking up at Chuck, "You're _still_ really cool."

"And, uh, you're going home," he decided, giving his friend a clear hint with a slight smile.

Morgan blinked and tried to stall. "Is it that time?" He asked, picking up his head to look at his watch.

"It's that time," Chuck confirmed without pause.

Morgan exhaled but couldn't think of an excuse to stay. "Right," he said, saving the game with his controller. He bent down to shove his feet into his battered sneakers and went out the bedroom door, leaving it ajar on the way.

Chuck smiled. "Pedal safe!" He called without looking over his shoulder. He was certain Morgan was safer on a bicycle than behind a wheel, but he still worried about his friend, especially since Morgan thought reflective panels were tacky and still didn't have any on his bike.

"Thank you!" Morgan yelled back. Chuck cringed and hoped that his friend hadn't woken up Ellie or Awesome.

He listened for the heavy front door to close, just to be sure that Morgan wasn't making a pit-stop in the kitchen to steal a Tupperware of Ellie's fantastic homemade chip dip. When he heard the door snick shut, he looked back to his computer monitor and mumbled to himself, trying to think back.

"What would I…" He tried remembering how they had customized the weapons. Bryce had wanted something cool, something more sophisticated than a basic weapon, which had made Chuck complain. He still remembered Bryce's taunt as he overcompensated by making it a rusted knife instead of a katana or something equally overstated in a stupid 1990s video game. He said it out loud as he typed it in. "Attack troll with nasty knife."

He eyed the phrase for a few seconds before entering it. Chuck wasn't sure why he was wasting his time with this when he had to be at work in the morning – or why he was wasting his energy on Bryce when the other man had made it clear there was no love lost between them.

Then he thought about what might happen if he did press enter. He couldn't think of any reason why Bryce would send their old game unless it was an olive branch. It would take a lot more than a copied Zork file to make up for everything, but Chuck had never liked being angry or holding grudges, and if this _was_ Bryce trying to reach out, maybe he owed it to his old friend to give him the chance to apologize.

Another voice, which sounded a lot like Ellie, told him that Chuck owed Bryce _nothing_ , not even a chance, and Chuck hated that he couldn't completely agree. Most people would have an easy time throwing aside every pleasant memory because of the knife lodged in his back, but Chuck just couldn't shake the feeling that if he didn't at least _try_ to understand why Bryce reached out now, of all times, then he would regret it.

Maybe the first part of moving on was actually understanding what happened four years ago. Maybe Bryce was willing to offer an explanation now that it was so far in the past.

He clicked the enter key and the text disappeared from the screen. Chuck waited for a new line to appear, or for the window to close itself. After a moment, the page was still blank. The mouse was still a loading sign, but Chuck wasn't convinced there was anything worth waiting for.

The (not quite) engineer rubbed his eyes and reached for the mouse. He dragged it up over the screen towards the black X on the top of the window but just before he reached it, colors burst forth on the screen. He let go of the mouse in surprise. Colors and shapes flashed so rapidly that he wasn't sure what he was seeing before it was gone again, replaced by something else.

His head hurt and it had only been what felt like a few seconds. It was _so much_ , which didn't make sense because it was only pictures. Images. Photographs. Although sometimes they moved, just a bit, and maybe they were tiny video clips, too. None of them made sense. None of them explained anything about Bryce, or…

 _W_ _hat?_ He couldn't remember what he was thinking about. His head _hurt_.

Chuck kept watching the pictures.

* * *

 _"Now boarding for flight 121 to Los Angeles. At this time, we would like to welcome any active military personnel to pre-board."_ The intercom went on to offer pre-boarding privileges to adults traveling with very young children and to flyers with physical handicaps. Other passengers on her flight began making long and clumsy lines which more closely resembled blobs in front of the signs for Zone 1 and Zone 2.

Daniela stayed in her seat and stretched her legs and jaw simultaneously. She was not feeling particularly ready to smile back at flight attendants or deal with the people around her – God help a seat-kicker who sat behind her on this flight.

The journalist stayed in her seat and people-watched while waiting for the crowd to filter through the gates. She liked to wait until most of the lines were gone to board so she didn't get jostled around or hustled too much, and only ever taking a carry-on meant she didn't have to fight with anyone else to make sure she had space in overhead storage. There were some military personnel skipping ahead of the line to board. An elderly man with a lot of pins on his uniform went ahead and showed his boarding pass. The token _"thank you for your service"_ line faintly met Dani's ears as he and two other uniformed personnel passed the gate and into the long hall towards the airplane.

It took almost twenty minutes for the staff to filter the lines through the gate and into the plane once they started boarding. Daniela was flying economy in Zone 3, but she waited until Zone 5 was called to go to the gates. She only stood in line for a quick moment before she was allowed past, and then she had to wait just a few minutes for the people ahead of her in the narrow plane aisle to stow their bags and figure out who was in what seat, and where the person already sitting was going to move to let the newcomer in.

Dani's seat was towards the back of the plane, and thankfully it was a window seat. She scooted in and unzipped her duffel, taking out her Walkman, earbuds, the lip balm Jo donated, and a case of gum she bought at the magazine stand. Then she pushed her duffel down underneath the seat ahead of her, popped some gum into her mouth, and put her few things into the pocket on the back of the seat in front.

The doors closed shortly after she got comfortable and another girl sat to her right. She, like Daniela, didn't look very wide-awake or sociable, so Dani skipped any pleasantries and popped her earbuds in to look like she was busy.

Flight staff went through the plane very quickly, checking that everyone was buckled in and the overhead containment shelves were shut tightly. Then most of the flight crew went to the back of the airplane, while two found places at the front and middle of the long center aisle to go through their well-practiced security presentation. They acted out the instructions given by a recording on the PA system with disconnected props. Dani tuned them out halfway through and leaned her head against the thick glass pane in the window, looking out at the dark horizon.

They started to taxi to the runway while the lights were still on and the attendants were demonstrating how to use the emergency equipment. The presentation was over before the plane had coursed through lanes marked by reflective paint and small colored lights in posts secured to the asphalt ground. Daniela smiled slightly as the lights dimmed. She had always liked plane rides, for the most part, even if they were a little bit cramped. There was something very relaxing about the soft lights outside, the warmth in the cabin, and the hum of the engines.

The engines fired up suddenly, becoming three times as noisy, while the airplane jolted forwards. The craft picked up speed until it was careening down the runway. Through the window, the writer saw the end in sight. She gave the wings a small grin as she felt the gravity change around her, pulling her back against her seat as the nose of the plane tilted up to lift off.

 _Three hours to Los Angeles,_ she thought to herself, her smile fading while she scrolled through options on her Walkman. She was gonna kick jetlag in the ass, even if it meant blaring punk rock in her ears to stay awake for the next three hours.


	2. Chapter Two

Chuck woke up on the floor with what felt like a hundred voices in his head and ten extra sets of eyes. He felt like he was seeing more than he could understand. Maybe that was why there were three Morgans hovering above him and saying his name.

Some big building of gleaming, dark glass covered Morgan for a second. Then it was an odd-shaped cloud or puff of gas, and at the same time he thought maybe his friend's green shirt was actually part of a computer grid. He shut his eyes and groaned.

"Chuck," Morgan said again, his voice sounding far away. "Chuck! Dude. Dude!"

Hands touched his shoulders and shook him against the floor. His neck was sore. When did he end up on the floor?

"You – you okay?" Morgan's voice was so concerned that Chuck tried to open his eyes again. He felt a lot less like throwing up this time. There was only one Morgan, and no visual tricks.

"Morgan?" He asked, confused, squinting at the bright overhead light.

"Yeah, man, yeah, it's me!" Morgan sounded so relieved that Chuck got the feeling he had been trying to wake him up for more than just a couple minutes. "What happened?"

"I was gonna ask you the same question," Chuck mumbled, rubbing his eyes hard. His vision felt wacky, his head was fuzzy. It was like the worst hangover ever, combined with what he imagined a bad acid trip might feel like.

He tried to figure out what had happened but the last thing he remembered was saying goodbye to Morgan and waiting for the Zork attachment to load. His stomach twisted queasily when he looked at his computer, but the screen was black and the computer itself, stored underneath his desk, was blinking an orange light as it "slept".

"You okay?" Morgan asked again, looking over his shoulder at Chuck's desk, trying to see what he was looking at.

Chuck swallowed hard and put a hand up. Morgan obligingly grabbed Chuck's hand and wrist and helped to pull the man to his feet. Chuck's knees quivered as discomfort prickled in his feet. He felt like he'd been standing in place all night, his feet sore and his legs stiff.

"Did you spike the punch?" Chuck asked suspiciously, running a hand through his hair and subtly massaging his scalp.

Morgan gasped at him and puffed out his chest like an angry penguin. "Something goes wrong, you blame me! After all these years, where's the trust?" Chuck gave him a tired and knowing glance while casting his eyes around the room for hints about what happened. His stomach flipped again at the sight of his computer. Morgan quit his tirade and said in a quiet, almost meek voice, "Yes, I did."

Chuck made a mental note not to ever drink something Morgan had been near ever again. Whatever he'd put in the punch was _lethal._

* * *

Suds slipped through his fingers and dropped with the water off his arms and into the tub. Hot steam condensed on the white tiles of the bathroom while the water reddened Chuck's skin and eased the stiffness out of his tense muscles. He felt awful, but the more he woke up, the more the awful disorientation faded.

The radio, mounted on the wall over the sink, continued to recite the local news while the techie rinsed shampoo out of his hair. Chuck reached behind him with a soapy hand and turned the hot water up just a little bit more.

 _"The 101 is clear at Universal City,"_ the host reported in what Chuck thought was probably the most generic radio host voice he'd ever heard, enunciating clearly and somehow sounding both calm and energetic. The extra heat contradictorily made Chuck shiver and roll his shoulders. He tipped his head back and slicked the water through his hair until it ran clear. _"Watch out for delays near Burbank Airport, as security's checking all vehicles."_

Colors flashed on his eyelids rapidly and he felt his body tense. _Pie cars grid lines glass pie apple pie traffic map glass cylinders pie._

His eyes snapped open and he stared at the tile ahead of him, shoulders as tight as they had been before he got under the shower spray. He felt like the images were emblazoned in his brain – a crisp, crumbling, fresh apple pie, a gridlocked street view, a detailed city map, and the dark building he barely remembered seeing when he woke up on his bedroom floor.

_"… on the I-605 San Gabriel River Freeway. Northbound…"_

He tried not to overthink it, but it felt like his brain had short-circuited for a moment. Chuck shuddered and crossed his arms, turning around so the hot water could blast his front. He stood there until his arms were turning pink and his chest was starting to hurt from the water pressure.

* * *

Dani had been out cold as soon as her head hit the pillow in the chain hotel where she was staying. It wasn't a great place, but for below seventy dollars a night, she would make do. All she had really cared about when checking in was that there was a clean bed, and she got a solid six hours overnight.

The morning was Daniela's favorite part of the day, which was weird, because she had never considered herself a morning person. As much as she hated getting out of bed, she liked how refreshing it felt to prepare her body for the day with a shower and clean clothes. She dug through the CVS bag she had exhaustedly dropped onto the floor by the bed and found mouthwash, which she swished around while she picked clothing for the day.

The journalist brushed her teeth after laying out undergarments, a pair of shorts, and the blouse she'd taken from Jo's closet. It wasn't her normal style, but fashion wasn't her biggest concern and it was something appropriate she could wear in the city. She brushed the tangles out of her hair, then spent a couple of minutes flipping through channels on the hotel's provided radio in the bathroom to find a channel in French. She liked listening to the news in the other languages she spoke to keep brushed up and fresh on her vocabulary and grammar.

The woman allowed herself an indulgently long shower. The water pressure wasn't as good as Joanna's, but she didn't run out of heat. Her shoulders, arms, back, and chest were still an uncomfortable red color, so she reminded herself to pick up aloe and turned around to reach for her favorite soap.

Her entire mood was lifted. The little luxuries of her preferred brands of hair products and body wash made her feel clean, comforted, and as at home as she ever really felt. When the water ran clear after conditioning her hair, Dani decided against getting out right away and stayed in the water, scrubbing her body a second time over to feel extra squeaky clean. After the last several months, there was no way she would ever underestimate the value of a good shower again.

Finally, with her body stinging from being rigorously washed, Dani shut off the water and wrung out her hair. The French talker on the radio was going over the politics of President Sarkozy and his populist platform. While she listened to the radio present two different arguments both for and against his proposed mission, Daniela dried herself off, stepped out onto the tiled bathroom floor, and wrapped her hair up in the towel so it wouldn't drip on her dry clothes. She dressed quickly, turned off the radio, and left the bathroom door open so the air would circulate and the mirror would clear up sooner.

She looked around her bare hotel room and shrugged, tilting her head for the fun of feeling the towel's weight shift. It sure wasn't the Ritz, but it was better than the little brick one-room she had spent weeks in across the world. She hadn't exactly picked a glamorous career.

* * *

Chuck and Morgan carpooled more often than not, mostly because Morgan didn't have a car and the Buy More required driving on heavily trafficked roads. Neither of them thought that Morgan stood a high chance of survival if he biked to and from work every day. Echo Park didn't have its own parking lot in the front, residents instead pulling up to curbs and parking on the sides of the street when they didn't want to move their cars to the back of the complex. Chuck had gotten stuck with a parking space further away after his last late shift, and every step on the asphalt made his sore feet throb.

Not that his feet hurt nearly as bad as his head, which still might explode if there were a loud enough noise. Morgan's voice wasn't particularly loud or high, but he just kept _talking_ , and he was talking so quickly that Chuck had to really _work_ to understand the words coming out of his friend's mouth. It was altogether too much effort to keep listening.

"So this morning I'm playing Xbox, and I'm like, _dude, just let me get the sniper rifle, I'll take care of it!_ The guy won't give me the sniper rifle, I need a frag grenade-"

"Morgan," Chuck finally interrupted in between musings about when _wasn't_ Morgan playing Xbox and when did every entertaining video game become about heavy artillery and warfare. "Morgan, Morgan, Morgan," he said a few more times, just to make sure Morgan heard his name over the sound of his own voice. "As much as I would _love_ to talk video games with you right now, I've got a really splitting headache-"

"Oh," Morgan interrupted sympathetically, looking up at the tall brunet and miming a lip-zip.

"-and I – in fact, you know what, can you do me a favor?" Chuck dug the keys out of his deep pants pocket. "Do you mind driving?" If he had to stare at the sunny Los Angeles sky through the windshield, his eyes were surely going to just burn out of his skull. Chuck tossed the keys at Morgan, who fumbled for them midair. Morgan never objected to driving on the rare occasions someone trusted him with a vehicle (he'd failed his driver's test twice before finally getting his license).

Morgan looked at the keys in his hands, stunned, even as Chuck went around the hood of the car to get to the passenger's side. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, _whoa,_ are you – look at me!" Chuck sighed and looked up over the top of the painfully bright gleam of the red- and white-painted car. "Are you being serious? You're gonna let me drive," Morgan asserted, pointing at himself.

"It's a company car, Morgan, it's not that big a deal," Chuck sighed, regretting now the times when he had used his Nerd Herder status to justify keeping the keys in his own hands. The Buy More logo was on the front hood and the back plates had the name of the store, but Morgan worked there too so what did it really matter?

"Whoa, whoa," Morgan loudly objected, gesturing wildly at the car and apparently forgetting all about the headache he'd been so sensitive to a minute ago. "It's not just a company car! A hooptie's a hooptie, homeboy! I mean, this baby's sitting on chrome!"

Morgan kicked the toe of his shoe lightly at the front tire near him.

"Or… plastic," he amended.

Chuck sighed and opened his door. "Do me a favor and stay off the 5, okay? Because the cops are in a phased…" He almost stopped, frowning at his hand on top of the door's frame. "Deployment…" He finished lamely with confusion.

There was no way he could have known the police deployment plans, but… he shook his head a little. He had been feeling off all morning, but Morgan had admitted to spiking the drinks at the party. Maybe Chuck had more than he'd thought. He probably just heard about the deployment on the radio as background noise while he was in the shower.

"Okay…" Morgan's eyebrows were raised but he didn't think too long on it. "Thanks for the tip, Ponch."

His friend's weird behavior wasn't going over his head, but Morgan ultimately cared more about driving than about Chuck's hangover, a fact which Chuck felt a tiny bit of animosity for. It went away as soon as he was sitting in the Nerd Herder with the visor down and his eyes covered by his hand.

* * *

Daniela was a fastidious notetaker. It had gotten her through the senior-level classes when she took eighteen credit hours per semester, and it was how she survived in intense situations while making the most out of it. It didn't matter how tired she was, how sore her body was, how many cuts or bruises she had on her arms, how deep the bone-crushing sense of despair sank. She took notes, she wrote or typed or talked about everything that happened to her when she was in class or on assignment.

In India, she couldn't take her laptop with her, and she couldn't leave a written record of what she was doing. If her debtor searched her belongings and knew what she had actually been doing at his kiln, she would have been in so much danger that she had had nightmares about that very hypothetical. Instead, she took a silver pen – easy to carry, easy to hide. The pen had a clip on the side to bind it to a notebook, but Daniela had used it to attach the pen to her bra or the inner waist of her boxers to keep it safe. She even slept with it on her person. The pen recorded when she clicked the depressor, and it had an extensive memory.

Carefully, Daniela twisted the top off. Instead of baring the workings of a pen inside, it was an electronic component with a tiny USB drive. She plugged the small USB into the port on her disc reader, then connected the disc reader to her laptop through a normally-sized USB.

Her laptop was pretty slow, but it did work with the technology that she had. The pen was more expensive than she had wanted to remember. She opened up the transcription software she had bought years ago and directed the file from the pen. Daniela clicked play, and as her laptop played the audio that the pen had recorded, her software began to write after the dictation.

She leaned back in her chair and smiled triumphantly while her own voice played. The words appeared on the document with only a few seconds of lag time.

 _"Day one,"_ she said in the recording, her voice quiet so she wasn't overheard. _"I'm in a hostel in Nepal, sharing a room with an Indian boy I can't communicate with. I think he was lured here like I let myself be, except I think he really believes what he was told. I hope he's not dead this time next week."_ It had been a joke, but as she saw the words be transcribed, Dani frowned a little and realized it didn't come across that way. Her gallows humor didn't translate as well months later, especially when her "jokes" were realistic. Oh, well. _"I'm outside to quickly fill in everything that happened today since my plane landed, but it's not much. Just – just suspicions, really, and my translator isn't sure he wants to commit to translating euphemisms. Euphemisms and expressions are important, I need to know them to understand what I'm learning."_

She turned the volume down a little lower so it wouldn't bother her while it continued to transcribe. She had a _lot_ of data on that pen that needed to be transcribed and it would take longer than she could afford to sit around and wait, and so she planned on plugging in her laptop to charge and go through the aural journals even while she slept and worked on other projects.

The woman went back to the CVS bag and dumped it out on her bed. She sat down by the mess and rubbed lotion onto her freshly-shaved and slightly irritated legs, then onto her dry hands and elbows, then lifted her shirt to rub deodorant under her arms. After that, she leaned forward and unwound her tightly-wrapped towel, picked up the hairbrush she took from Joanna, and went back to the bathroom, where she blow-dried and brushed.

This all done, Daniela packed her new belongings into her duffel so she would be ready to go quickly. It was more trouble to have to pack and unpack everything as she used it, but she preferred living out of her bag to the risk of forgetting something in a hotel room after she got too comfortable.

The security conference wasn't until the next day, leaving the brunette with a full day without any strict time demands. She needed to go shopping and would prefer to get that done without waiting until the last minute, and she also needed to get something to eat, because her stomach was beginning to feel the emptiness and wasn't too happy about it.

She went to her laptop and checked on the transcription progress. It was up to the beginning of her fourth day in Nepal. She minimized the window but was sure to leave the program running and opened an Internet browser after connecting to the hotel's Wi-Fi. It was sure to run slowly, but that was better than nothing. When her homepage opened, Daniela clicked on the search bar and typed in keywords to find a mall in Los Angeles – where she could find food, clothes, and aloe all in one place. The webpage was almost loaded when her entire screen went dark.

"Uh…" She tapped on the screen, and when that didn't happen, she checked the power button. It was still on, glowing with a green light, but nothing was happening and even her quiet audio had stopped playing.

A few seconds passed before her screen came back to life, and Daniela breathed relief before she realized that that wasn't the screen she had been using. The base programming of her computer was pulled up, with boxes displaying information on her fan and internal processor, but that wasn't the actual operating system, and as it was, the laptop was useless.

Daniela tried twice to save the settings and reboot her laptop, but both times, it failed to reboot and opened instead to the BIOS page. She groaned and put her head in her hands. She had no idea how to fix that.

"Great," she said to her computer, increasingly pissed off. "Great! There go my plans. I guess I'll take you to an electronics store." She pursed her lips tightly and slammed a fist on the table. "Oh, wait, I can't find one without the Internet, you utter _disappointment._ " Dani angrily unplugged the USBs, put the recorder back into her pen, and turned off her laptop.

* * *

After a forty-minute car ride and a more-or-less painless set-up of the Nerd Herd desk in the center of the store, Chuck felt significantly better. The pain throbbed, but it had stopped feeling like his brain was bouncing around in his skull every time he turned his head. It was a particularly good thing for the workday ahead, which promised some nasty phone calls and displeased customers.

"Fellow nerds," Chuck called to get the attention of the other white-shirted employees. Sales staff wore green shirts with short sleeves, and info-techies wore long-sleeved white button-downs. Aside from himself, there were three other Nerd Herd employees currently working, but a couple of salesmen stopped to listen, too. "Today is going to be a very bad day. We've got a new computer virus on our hands. They're calling this one the Irene Demova virus-"

In front of the counter, Lester practically doubled over laughing. Chuck sighed inwardly. He'd seen that coming from a mile away. On the outside, Chuck forced a little laugh which he knew didn't sound very sincere. It was hard to genuinely laugh about something that was going to be causing them a hassle in the days or possibly weeks to come, especially with his rough night and wonky mood.

"Yes, it's named after the Serbian porn star," he confirmed. "Lonely dude call volume will be high. This is a nasty one, kids, it's a computer killer." Chuck picked up a pretty heavy laptop and put it on the countertop, turning it around to face his coworkers. "Last night, the display version of our Prism Express laptop was fried when _someone_ decided to enter Miss Demova's website."

Chuck punctuated his sentence with a pointed look at Morgan. He didn't even want to _think_ about why Morgan was looking at porn on store products during his late shifts. The floor could be dull and empty at night, but it was never dull and empty enough to make that okay.

He turned back to the laptop. It was already unsellable after being damaged somehow in shipping, so demonstrating the MO of the virus was more of an informational exercise than a money-wasting one. "Anna, close the eyes," Chuck politely requested before hitting enter on the domain link. "This is what happens."

Anna, he noted, did not close her eyes. She just sent him a wary look as if she was wondering whether or not he needed a reminder that she was just as capable of watching porn as Morgan, and Chuck immediately shook his head slightly and looked down to demonstrate contrition. His attempts to be a gentleman were not always appreciated by the feisty young woman, and the last thing he wanted to do was accidentally offend the only other competent member of his team. (Not that he would ever say that out loud.)

The homepage had a smaller window for a video which automatically began to play, showing a Serbian woman in black lingerie and heavy makeup laying across a neatly made bed. Long, pointed fingernails dragged slowly across the smooth, soft-looking skin of her thigh.

That was when the problem started. Not even two seconds into the video, when the woman began to talk, the audio came with a lag as pop-ups started to flash onto the screen. _"Oh, this sexy,"_ the Serbian purred in a sultry, accented voice. _"Am I sexy?"_ The sound deepened and slowed as more and more pop-ups, followed quickly by dozens of overlapping error messages, began to cover the screen. _"Am I sexy?"_

As the voice distorted into something more fitting of a horror movie, the laptop glared spots of white across the monitor as if a bright light were hitting the screen. Once the error messages were filling the entire screen and the sound had quit entirely, the laptop went to black and shut down.

At once, everyone who watched the computer's death looked over at Morgan, who was standing behind the Nerd Herd desk with the master remote for the TV wall, changing screens of various sizes to the same channel. He paused when he felt eyes on him and grinned sheepishly.

"I'm sorry, Chuck, she drives me crazy!" Morgan held his arms out helplessly and clicked the unmute button, letting all of the televisions play local news coverage. "But that's love!"

Morgan was as in love with Irene Demova as Chuck was a rich software designer.

He turned back to his white-shirted associates and wryly said, "Ladies and gentlemen, if you'll please just ignore dirty Uncle Morgan, I think that everything…" The anchorman was presenting the main story at a desk in front of a studio background. "… Will be…"

_"-who is set to arrive in Los Angeles later today to deliver his speech before the security league tomorrow evening. The general has drawn fire for his criticism…"_

"Normal…" Chuck trailed off, forgetting what he had been saying as he looked at one of the larger screens. The rolling headline at the bottom of the screen declared _NATO General to Give Speech at_ \- and he couldn't see the rest of it yet.

The Buy More was gone and he could barely make sense of what he was seeing, except a sense of urgency was drilling into his bones and his headache slammed back as if it had never gone. _Pie eye red black plane jet man army apple tape eye 121 jets uniform_ -

Chuck clenched his hand hard until his fingernails were pinching into the fleshy part of his hand below his thumb. His headache wasn't driving him to his knees like he had feared it would, but he felt incredibly confused. Those conscious thoughts didn't feel like they were his, but they were getting shoved at him so fast he couldn't do anything except ride it out.

He tried to remember what exactly he'd seen. The pie, god, he kept seeing that pie. Was he hungry or something? That was what happened when he skipped breakfast. He had flashes of pie all morning. Or maybe he was going crazy.

Pie, and… someone's face, their eye up close, held open with thin strips of tape that couldn't have been comfortable, and some sort of electronic display board with red letters spelling out a flight number. How he knew it was a flight number… he wasn't sure what those planes meant, what any of them meant, but it was like he'd seen a montage of planes and jets from airport cameras to old WWII films, all conveying the same message, and then there was some older man he'd never seen before dressed in army or military greens.

No, that wasn't true – as he shook his head just a bit, he saw the televisions again, the real screens in the real store where he really was, and on a camera window to the right of the anchorman's face, a video clip showed the same man Chuck had just had that weird visual flash of. He was older, at least in his sixties, with whitening hair and a heavily decorated armed forces uniform.

"He's already here, he landed last night," Chuck blurted, responding to the newsperson. He couldn't arrive if he was already in the city.

"Who's already here, Chuckles?" Anna smacked her lips while she chewed her gum but when he turned to look at her, startled by her unexpected question, he saw that her posture was more open than usual, leaning towards him with her head cocked in concern.

"I…" Chuck looked to the televisions again and then back at Anna. How _did_ he know that? There was no way he knew that. That was stupid. It was the hangover again. Right? "I don't know," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, his palm stinging and his head reeling anxiously.

* * *

Daniela called a taxi service and had a car pick her up outside her hotel, then told the driver to take her to the nearest decent electronics or computer store. She spent a little more than ten minutes sitting in the back seat with her computer on her lap, zipped into its protective sleeve, while the driver navigated particularly heavy traffic on an interstate road. When he finally took an exit, he pulled into a parking lot surrounded by a few large stores and smaller shops not far from the ramp and drove up to the front of a store called the Buy More in lots of green and yellow.

"Thanks," Dani said automatically, handing over some money. The cab driver made change and Daniela shoved it into her pocket while getting out.

She went into the store expecting something like Best Buy. She'd heard of Buy More before, though most of her life had been spent on the eastern side of the country, where Best Buy and other chain names had dominated the market of public opinion. On the west coast, it was the other way around.

The doors automatically opened for her and she looked around to case the store quickly. She hated that she couldn't turn off her habits even in the safety of a big, public American place. One or two traumatizing incidents and suddenly she couldn't get this compulsion out of her psyche. She picked out all of the exit signs she could see, the doorways that lead to back halls and offices, and within ten seconds she had spotted a place to hide (the closed-off customer service desk to her right) and at least three potential weapons within ten yards.

The large main aisle ran from the doors straight to a circular customer service counter in the middle of the store, above which hung a circular sign that read "Nerd Herd" in black on white with a goofy-looking logo circled in red. Away from the large aisle, the store was carpeted in a very dark blue. Rows of shelves ran perpendicular to the nicer off-white flooring, with signs perched at the end of each sturdy double-sided shelving unit indicating which aisles contained what types of merchandise. Altogether, it was a clean, organized, and aesthetically acceptable store, which was more than she could say for a lot of places she'd been.

Daniela walked up the aisle to the Nerd Herd desk – ugh, that was almost enough to make her cringe – while holding her laptop to her abdomen protectively. A few people in green shirts were loitering around, none seeming to do anything productive, but she gave them the benefit of the doubt by acknowledging that there weren't many customers at the moment.

The Nerd Herd desk had a service bell on the counter, but she didn't see the point in ringing when there were two people already in the center, one bent down so all she could see was short and curly brown hair and the back of a white shirt. The other was standing with her back to Dani – she assumed the other was female because of the long, straight black hair streaked with blue.

"Excuse me?" She asked politely, cocking her head.

Chuck had been working on reviewing order tags for other previous solutions which needed to be charged to credit accounts on the laptop. It wasn't fun, but it was pretty easy, and that was something – it didn't make his head hurt. He looked up at a woman's curious and somewhat prompting voice.

The woman with blue hair didn't even turn around, but the man bent over his desk looked up quickly. "Hi!" He stood up straight with a welcoming and friendly smile. He was really tall. His white shirt pocket had an employee badge on it with his photograph, job (Nerd Herd supervisor), and name (Chuck), as well as a couple pens. "Welcome to the Nerd Herd, how can I assist you today? Computer problems?"

"Ah, yeah." Daniela lifted her computer sleeve indicatively and unzipped it, taking her laptop out carefully and setting it on the counter. "My laptop's not starting up. I mean, it turns on, but it won't boot."

Chuck smiled pleasantly and reached for her computer, turning it around so it was facing him while he said cheerfully, "Alright, well, let's see what we can do about that!" A lot of employees risked getting in trouble if a customer said anything about their mood, which resulted in a "customer service" persona that usually got on Daniela's nerves for its unrealistic peppiness, but this didn't feel like it was forced.

Chuck stole a better look at the girl while he waited for her laptop to turn on and tried to be subtle about it. She had bright green eyes and pretty, soft brown hair that fell in large, loose curls around her shoulders. Her sharp jawline was complemented by high and round cheeks.

Her laptop screen cast more light and he quickly looked down at it before he was caught. The screen opened right to the basic BIOS settings without making the noise of the fan that computers were supposed to make when they powered up.

Chuck felt her eyes watching him curiously while he scanned the diagnostics screen for problematic settings. Sometimes computers swapped their settings for seemingly no reason, especially if new software was introduced or old programming was updated, and those altered settings could actually run counter to command and create problems for the user.

Daniela leaned on the counter to her right, not so she could spy on what he was doing but because she was still really tired. Staying on her feet was taking a lot more energy than she felt she had, what with a short night's sleep after so many long hours on airplanes in the last few days. Chuck didn't seem to mind her using the counter as a balancing post, scrolling his fingers lightly over her mouse pad and tapping through drop-down menus.

After a moment, Chuck reached the boot protocols section on the righthand side of the screen and opened up the menu for source options. The laptop said there were none detected and he frowned sympathetically. A busted hard drive was always a pain, and they always seemed to happen right when they were the most inconvenient.

"It looks like you have a problem with your hard drive," he told her, looking up with an apologetic smile.

"I figured that much," she responded, gesturing tiredly at the device with one hand. Now that she was closer, he could see darkness under her eyes. He wondered if he had the same circles after how awful his night was. She continued, "But that's where my technical expertise ends. Can you guys do diagnostics or take it apart or whatever and fix it?"

"Ah, well, yeah, of course, that's – that's what we do. I like to think we're pretty good at it," he added modestly with a little laugh. Daniela let him get a small smile out of her, but inside she was thinking that if the Nerd Herd wasn't good at Nerd Herding, they probably wouldn't still have jobs. His smile fell slightly and he glanced over her shoulder. If Big Mike or – even worse – Harry heard him telling someone to take business elsewhere, he was in for it. "Um, but diagnostics are going to take a while, and – and there's a fee for having them done, unless you have a Nerd Herd warrantee on your computer?"

Daniela shook her head. She'd never so much as put a foot inside a Buy More branch in her life before now.

"I see," Chuck said, having thought as much. Her computer didn't have any Buy More or Nerd Herd stickers on it, and although they had a wide range of laptop sleeve options, they didn't carry the one like she still held under her arm. "Well, um, I shouldn't tell you this, but if you want it done cheaper, you could take it back to the store where you bought it, if you have a warrantee or membership, but we'd have to charge full rate." He hoped he conveyed sincerity.

Daniela didn't even stop to think or weigh the options. The warrantee on her laptop expired a year ago and she didn't have the mental energy to worry about saving fifty bucks when she _needed_ her laptop, ASAP. No laptop meant no transcription software.

Chuck saw the resigned decision on her face before she even spoke again and reached with one hand underneath his desk for an order form.

"I _really_ need my computer for my job," she stated briefly. "Just – fix it here, I'll pay whatever it costs."

"Alright, great." Chuck lifted his hand, put the paper on the counter near her, and unhooked a pen from his shirt pocket, handing it over. She plucked it out of his hands and he noticed her fingernails were short and chipped. "If you can just put in your information then I'll fill out the rest, and we can give you a call when your computer's ready to be picked up."

He smiled at her again. The majority of customers were reasonable and pleasant people, and although the Buy More wasn't exactly where he thought he would be as an adult, he did enjoy getting to use his skills to help people.

Daniela smiled back at his kind brown eyes. The height had put her off a bit at first, but he was cute, and friendly, and Dani had gotten so used to the stressful concentration required to speak to people around her in the Middle East and Asia that speaking with someone in English was relaxing for her mind and her mouth.

She wrote in her name quickly, remembering to use her real name instead of her pseudonym. The kind of writings she published and the field work she did tended to make some enemies as well as fans and after she realized that some investigative journalists died for their work, Daniela had adopted a pen name to use.

"Please try to recover my files," she requested while writing her phone number from memory and moving to the email box. She didn't see the point in providing an email when she couldn't exactly check her email until her laptop was back, but the box was marked with an asterisk so she wrote it anyway. "But if my hard drive's just trash then go ahead and replace it with whatever model's best for my laptop." She didn't want to lose the few documents that _weren't_ saved and stored, but it wasn't a huge loss if they were gone. "I have everything important backed up in approximately fourteen different places," she overstated for effect.

"Oh, boy," Chuck said with a little bit of surprise. "That's good, because, you know, most people who come in for busted hard drives, they have fourteen different devices and nothing is backed up anywhere!" He exaggerated like she did companionably.

Daniela entered the hotel address instead of a permanent address and hoped that was good enough, then clicked the ballpoint tip back into the pen and slid both pen and form over the counter. Chuck took the pen and put it back in his pocket, moving the form down in front of the large desktop monitor beneath the customer counter.

Whenever a device didn't leave with the owner, the Nerd Herd printed out an information sticker with a barcode that corresponded to the information within their computer system. It was a little repetitive, but Chuck liked that it made it harder for laptops to get mixed up or sent home with the wrong people. He pulled up the right window on the company desktop and looked down to her information to start to type it in, but his fingers froze over the keys.

 _Daniela,_ he read, and his eyes automatically darted to her last name. The excitement that quickly flooded his system was more than enough to make him forget his headache.

"Oh – oh – oh my God," he stuttered, looking up at her with a huge grin and running his hand through his hair, pushing it back and assuming he didn't just make it look worse.

"Great, is it worse than I thought?" She replied, looking weary, and tried to peek over to see the form. She really thought she'd put in her real name but maybe she was wrong – she didn't know what could elicit that reaction, unless he read her articles.

"No! It's good!" He promised, grinning widely and feeling so stupid that he couldn't stop smiling. His cheeks were going to be hurting soon, he knew it. "I – I mean, not your hard drive," he quickly said, rambling before he knew what he was doing. "Between you and me that's in the trash already." Her eyebrows lifted and if she were anyone else in the world, Chuck would have backtracked. "But you – your name!"

Daniela frowned at him for only a second before she understood, and her lips parted in surprise before she even had words to say. It wasn't often that someone could leave her speechless. She looked down at his nametag again as she remembered that sometimes Chuck was used as a nickname for Charles.

"You wouldn't happen to be-" She started to ask, a shocked but eager smile pulling at her lips. This was not anything like how she had thought she would meet a soulmate.

"Chuck Bartowski!" He proclaimed loudly, quickly correcting himself, " _Charles_ Bartowski." He beamed at her brightly. If Daniela had thought he was friendly and happy before, now he was ecstatic. "Hi!"

"Hi!" She said back, giving him a full smile of her own. Bartowski was not a common name, and she almost religiously covered her mates' names with tattoo cream since before she even turned sixteen. There was no way this man _wasn't_ hers. "I'm Daniela Harris, but you knew that."

"Yeah, I did! Oh, wow." Chuck shut her laptop and moved it out of the way without really thinking about what he was doing. He just knew that he was looking at his soulmate, and it was going to be for real, because he was a nice person and he deserved to have another best friend who didn't stab him in the back, damn it. "I'm sorry," he offered, knowing that he was being a little loud and a little overexcited. He just was _so happy_. He had wondered what Daniela would be like since Ellie had read her name for him when she started school. "Wow," he said again, admiring her eyes, which seemed to be richer and brighter when she was smiling.

Daniela laughed a little. It just bubbled out of her. She hadn't laughed carelessly in several months and it felt good, right, even, that her soulmate was the one to change that. He was so happy to meet her; it made her feel like the hard work she had been doing for most of her life was going to be worth it. She'd accomplished a lot. He could be proud to say he was her soulmate, and that happiness wouldn't go away.

She needed to see him again, and going by how he was looking at her and smiling like he had just been given an entire box full of puppies, she didn't think he was going to object.

"You know, this might be really cliché," she admitted, a little embarrassed by the line she was about to use. She hadn't been on a date in a long time and her flirting was rusty. "But I've never actually been to Burbank before, and maybe you could suggest a good place for dinner?"

He brightened immediately. He could do that! He could fix her computer _and_ direct her to tasty food – both very, very important services. "Oh, yeah, sure! What do you like?" A voice in his head that sounded like Ellie advised him to shut up and let her answer, but he was eager to tell her all about his favorite places. "Because if it's Chinese, my best friend Morgan, he knows all the best Chinese places within twenty miles, but if you like Mexican, Italian – I've totally got you covered there."

Her beautiful green eyes sparkled and the color looked so lovely with the purple V-neck blouse she wore. "I really like Italian," the journalist told him, amused by his response. She wasn't certain that her intention had gotten through.

"Well, Tony's is really good, especially if you like pizza! The Monte Carlo has _amazing_ sandwiches, makes sense, they're a deli. Centanni is a little more, uh, upscale," Chuck raised his flat hand to indicate, "They're really, really good though, and they have those little candles, um, tealights!"

Daniela just smiled and let him continue to extoll the virtues of several more Italian restaurants. By how well he seemed to know them, she guessed he had lived here for a long time. It became clearer that he didn't understand she was trying to ask him out, but that just made it more endearing to her – he was so happy to be helpful. His masculine voice wasn't too low for her liking, either, which made it nice and comfortable to lean on the counter towards him and listen for him to finish.

When he paused for a moment to take a breath, Dani decided to correct the misunderstanding in as clear a way as possible. "How about Centanni?" She suggested, trying again to flirt. "That sounds like a good place to have a date."

Chuck, who opened his mouth when she initially asked, shut it with a little audible click of his teeth as his cheeks turned pink. Daniela smiled again at his sweet and innocent blush and he took that to mean that she wasn't going to be offended or tease him about not catching on sooner, which was nice because he felt pretty dumb.

But the last thing he wanted to do was _assume_ what she wanted, because that would probably make him look like a presumptuous jerk if he was wrong. "Oh, you were – you were asking _me_ to go _with_ you?" He checked, pointing at himself, feeling the heat in his face creeping up to his ears.

Daniela nodded, to his relief, biting her pale pink lip gently between her teeth to muffle a giggle which almost made him swoon. "Yeah, I thought we could go for dinner _together._ " Then, because she realized now she needed to be explicitly clear, "On a date."

It took him all of a millisecond to agree. "That sounds – I mean – that sounds great!" He grinned brightly. Did he have plans? He didn't think so. Oh, well, they could be rescheduled. This was his _soulmate_ who wanted to spend time with him. "Yeah! I'd love to get to know you! When do you, uh, when?"

"How about eight?" The writer suggested. She had gotten used to eating late while in India, and eight o'clock was late enough that the dinner rush would be over and a restaurant would be quieter. "Or whenever you get off work."

"I'm off work by eight." Chuck confirmed, bobbing his head eagerly. "Eight's good. I can do eight."

Daniela gave him another small smile. She didn't want to seem like one of those people who just flirted constantly, but she was happy and didn't think it would hurt to let him see that. "I'll see you at Centanni at eight. And if something comes up…" She stood up on her toes and reached over the customer counter to tap a finger on her order form on the desk. "You have my number."

Chuck swallowed, wondering if she was intentionally leaning so close to him. Daniela pulled back and gave him another sweet, kind smile before she turned to leave. There was no point in staying longer when they had made plans, as he was still working and she had errands that needed to be run – now with a deadline. She needed to be somewhere at eight, and she walked down the wide tiled aisle with her head up, looking forward to it.

Chuck watched her go with a grin on his face that he knew smacked of starry-eyed stupidity. If all went well – and he was determined to do his best to put a good foot forward and be open-minded and kind – then that woman was going to be his best friend.

* * *

It didn't feel like much mattered after Daniela left, because Chuck couldn't go five minutes without smiling as he thought about their date. He hadn't been this excited since – he couldn't remember. Probably not since sometime when he was at Stanford. It was sad to say, but…

This was different from his sister feeling sorry for him and trying to introduce him to every female person she knew. Daniela was his _soulmate,_ he had been looking forward to meeting her since he was learning to ride a bike and playing catch in the courtyard. Jill was his first love, and he had unresolved feelings that still tightened in his chest. Daniela was his _soulmate_ , and they meant different things to him. Even if he wasn't sure what, exactly, those differences were, he had known long before Jill was in his life that Daniela was in his future and had similarly known that even if he married the girl of his dreams after college, there would still be space for his Ella in his life.

Oh. Ella. She hadn't introduced herself as Ella. Maybe she didn't go by that. He would have to ask her if it was okay. He didn't want to keep calling her a name that she didn't like.

The Buy More didn't have a quota for their sales representatives to meet. In principle, Chuck agreed with the policy (or lack thereof) but in practice, it meant Morgan slacked off a lot on the job, as did most of their colleagues. The number of times Jeff or Lester had handled a broken device in the last month could probably be counted on his fingers. Chuck could admit that he didn't always studiously remain riveted on Nerd Herd duties – for example, right now he was daydreaming about his date instead of actually _reading_ the papers he was staring at – but at least he _pretended_ to be working.

Morgan was going on about something, leaning on the counter where _she_ had been just an hour ago. Chuck smiled at his friend's direction and Morgan took it as some form of encouragement because he just kept going. He indulgently let his friend keep talking, actually tuning him out into the background noise.

Morgan swatted him hard in the side, realizing at some point that Chuck wasn't listening anymore. "Stop the presses!" He gasped, jumping up high onto the counter and sitting on the edge. Chuck tilted his head to hold the plastic phone receiver between his ear and his shoulder, still waiting for the hold music to end. "Who is _that?_ Vicki Vale," Morgan appreciatively muttered.

Chuck didn't care much to join Morgan in staring at the poor woman who had caught his friend's attention, but the reference was too good to pass up. The V and I sounds made it fun to pronounce in a high tone as he pretended to deejay to himself. When Morgan didn't say anything even after several seconds of Chuck's musical attempts, he looked up and realized there was a girl standing right in front of the Nerd Herd counter.

Less than two feet away.

Mortified, he lifted his head and dropped the phone. His fingers went slack on the papers he was holding and they all fell onto his desk after the receiver loudly crashed and clattered. He felt the blush beginning to cover his face and quickly dove behind the counter to pick up the papers and cough.

"I hope I'm not interrupting," their customer said politely, sounding amused.

"No, not at all," Chuck hurried to reassure, feeling painfully uncertain of whether or not he should stay bent over and pretend to be a rock. It was a very appealing thought. "That-" He coughed again and stood up, willing his face to return to its normal color. "That's from Batman," he explained awkwardly.

"Because that makes it better," she remarked sarcastically.

"Ha," Chuck forced a loud laugh, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Uh, hi," Morgan said, hopping off of the counter and stepping closer to the blonde. "I'm Morgan. This is, uh, this is Chuck." Morgan was giving him an odd look for just a second as if he was trying to decide whether or not to use Chuck's real name, but it was a good thing he decided not to lie, since Chuck's nametag was right there on his shirt.

She lifted one of her thin eyebrows. She was gorgeous, all soft blue eyes and shiny yellow hair. _And a quick tongue,_ Chuck realized a moment later when she commented, "Wow, I didn't think parents still named their kids Chuck. Or Morgan, for that matter," she said as an afterthought, sending the Latino a slightly arch look, and Chuck winced, knowing that this was the payback for what she overheard.

"My parents are sadists," Chuck explained quickly, for once thankful that he had a tendency to talk when he was nervous or embarrassed. It would've been worse to just stand there uncomfortably. "And carnival freaks found him in a dumpster."

"But they raised me as one of their own," Morgan finished, frowning and staring dismally ahead of him as if the story were actually true. It was a running joke – not that the blonde would know that. Morgan walked away as he detected a quick escape route and slid along the circumference of the counter.

"Ah…" Chuck looked after Morgan for just a second before he realized that, uncomfortable or not, he still had a customer waiting for service. "How can I help you…?" He gave her a sheepish little grin.

"Sarah," she supplied.

"Sarah," he repeated, finishing his question.

Sarah reached into her pocket, out of his line of sight. "I'm here about this," she announced, lifting her hand and showing him a small flip-open cell phone. Chuck recognized it immediately – he had seen more than enough of them in the last few months.

"Oh, yeah, the Intellicell," he remarked, picking it out of her hand. It was such a weight off of his shoulders that he could take care of it right away and make up for the deejaying. "Yeah, absolutely, uh, this model has a little screw that pops loose right in the back here." He turned it over and pressed on the back cover until it came off to show her the tiny silver piece that was able to wiggle under his fingernail. He pulled a miniature flathead screwdriver from his shirt pocket. "Just go ahead and give it a couple quick turns, and… good as new. No problem."

"Wow," Sarah said, smiling slightly as she took her phone back and replaced the back cover herself. "You geeks are good."

"Nerds," Chuck corrected her quickly, glancing over his shoulder when he heard Morgan's voice echo the same thing. Apparently his friend had come back, this time behind the counter. "I would say-"

"It's no big deal," Morgan promised her, waving a hand dismissively.

"It's just, uh, I mean, you know." Chuck gestured at the big sign literally hanging over their heads. "Nerd Herd."

It wasn't a large or particularly loud store, but Chuck was still startled when another man came running to the counter, breathing hard. Sarah didn't blink, and even moved out of the way respectfully.

"Excuse me, excuse me, I – I have an emergency," the man panted, dressed in a casual red shirt and dragging a child in a ballerina tutu behind him. Chuck tilted his head and shortly wondered when anything related to the Nerd Herd became worthy of emergency status. "I don't know what I did wrong," the father fumbled with a video camera and put it up on the counter, "But I shot the entire recital, but – but now it won't play back!"

"Oookay," Chuck said slowly, looking between the father and daughter pair before acting. They both looked really upset, and seeing the child looking down at the floor pulled on his heartstrings. She wasn't fussing or mad, just disappointed. "Okay," he repeated, picking up the recorder. He made sure his tone was calm and soothing. "Well, we'll just take a look, and-" He popped open the side and looked up questioningly. "You don't have a tape in here."

His face was blank for a moment before he realized it was a problem. "But it's digital," he argued.

From behind Chuck, Morgan muttered an exasperated _"oh, boy"_ and walked away. It wasn't his job to handle people who didn't understand the technology they were using.

"Right, yes," Chuck agreed, mentally scrambling to figure out a way to concisely explain what digital actually meant. "But you still need a digital _tape._ "

Luckily for him, the father didn't blow up, just looked like he'd been slapped really hard with the camera in question. "Oh, no," he groaned, letting go of his daughter and covering his face. He leaned on the counter and Chuck took a small, involuntary step away. "Oh, her mom's gonna kill me."

Chuck looked at the little ballerina again and frowned empathetically. He hated when children were upset, especially when they really hadn't done anything to put themselves in their situation. Not to mention that ballet was hard, and she had probably put in a lot of time and work and effort to perform. There was no way he could just send them home. It would nag at him all day. Maybe even all week.

There was no getting back the recital, but Chuck could easily help the man buy a tape and record his kid's performance, even if it wasn't on a stage. "Uh…" He turned around and called loudly, unsure where his friend had gone. "Morgan, I need the wall!"

From somewhere in the aisles of TV-related equipment, Morgan yelled back, "It's yours!"

Chuck put the video camera down on his desk and turned to Sarah. He didn't want to be rude, but this needed to be taken care of for the little ballerina, and Sarah's phone was fixed. "I'm so sorry," he said, and he meant it. It hadn't felt like they were done talking, and he liked a little bit of conversation with amenable customers. Sarah's small smile told him she understood and wasn't bothered. "This way," he said to the father and gestured for him to follow.

* * *

With Morgan's help, Chuck set up a makeshift stage for the little ballerina to repeat her performance. They took one of the store's display cameras, popped a new tape in it, and while Morgan rang up the charge for the father to pay for the tape, Chuck hooked up the video recorder with HDMI cords so that everything the camera recorded also played on the wall of televisions behind them. It wasn't exactly a full class of ballet dancers, but it was the best they could do.

Morgan used a handheld camera stabilizer to keep the camera steady and leaned against a shelving rack as an additional measure. His friend could be a pain, but he was also a really good friend capable of being thoughtful and kind.

Other customers who had been near the TV section were happy to move out of the way so that the girl could perform, while the father was anxiously standing near Morgan as if he were concerned the salesman would record his daughter's play wrong. (Wouldn't that be rich?) Chuck shut off the quiet music that almost always played over the PA system before checking with Morgan, who gave him a thumbs-up.

"You ready?" Chuck asked, leaning down by the little girl in her pink tutu and ballet flats. She was in matching shades of soft coral pink, even the ribbon in her hair. She looked really nervous and shook her head at him a little. He frowned empathetically and got on one knee – his height made it difficult to lean down to her eye level for very long. "What's wrong?"

"I'm usually in the back row," the little girl answered, her brown eyes bright with worry.

Chuck feigned a look of confusion. "Why?"

"I'm too tall," she answered insecurely. For just a moment, Chuck wanted to have a word with her ballet instructor. She couldn't be more than seven or eight years old – she was too young to be told she was too much of anything that she couldn't actually fix. "I block the other ballerinas."

"Can I tell you a secret?" Chuck whispered seriously, keeping his face totally solemn. "But you can't tell the other girls." She nodded, childlike curiosity defeating her timid nerves. " _Real_ ballerinas? _Are_ tall," he promised. She rewarded him with a sweet, reassured smile and nodded at him that she was ready. Chuck grinned back before standing up and moving out of the way.

He went back to the Nerd Herd counter and started to play the ballet music that the girl had stored on her MP3. She had a lot of classical music for a child, he noted, but it was very relaxing stuff. He watched while leaning back, making sure that she could see him smiling at her encouragingly while she danced. The ballerina was so cute, she made him want to hug someone.

Her dance didn't look like much compared to adult shows, but Chuck was man enough to admit that he, a fully-grown adult, was not nearly graceful enough to complete the neat steps she went through. She wasn't dancing pointe, but she looked like she might be going in that direction in a few years. Her tutu fluttered and bounced when she moved in arcs and circles, and she held her back and arms straight, looking only directly in front of her, probably like she was taught.

When the song ended, the girl clapped for herself excitedly and immediately ran to her dad for a hug. Chuck glanced around at the scattered applause from other staff and customers who had stopped what they were doing to watch. (Lester, for some reason, looked completely repulsed by the miniature recital. Chuck would never understand him.) Morgan moved the video camera and took it out of the stabilizer, saved the video, powered it down, and popped the tape out to safely store in a package for the little family.

"Did you get it?" The father asked Morgan hopefully, on his knees and rubbing his daughter's back. "Did it work?"

He didn't hear how Morgan replied because he heard his name being shouted instead. "Chuck!" Harry angrily stormed up to the Nerd Herd counter.

Chuck sighed softly, knowing the conversation wouldn't be fun. Harry had been part of the Buy More staff since before Chuck had joined in '03, but while most of the employees had assimilated into the friendly and casual workplace culture, Harry was an aggressively ambitious salesman who had very few friends. Unlike Chuck, he had the luxury of either a social life completely separate from work or just not caring about how he was perceived.

"Hi, Harry," Chuck politely greeted. "Uh, look, we'll be back up and running in five minutes."

"Five minutes?" Harry hissed, not seeming to realize that his loud hostility was disturbing the customers close enough to hear. "Do you know what five minutes means in Buy More dollars?"

"I didn't realize we had our own currency," Chuck quipped. Harry hated flippancy and Chuck didn't like provoking him, but it was the only way that he could brush off the other man's confrontational behavior without it getting under his skin. "Look, I'm sorry about all the commotion-"

Harry raised his voice louder. "We are not _stock boys_ anymore, Chuck!" Chuck resisted the urge to note that he had never actually been in charge of stocking. He was hired directly onto the Nerd Herd because of the Stanford credit hours he could list on his resumé, which was more than anyone else could boast. Chuck tried not to think too hard about what that might imply. "We are _leaders_ , Buy More leaders. And you wonder why Big Mike wants _me_ for assistant manager."

That got his attention. "Wha- there's an open position?" Chuck regretted taking the bait but he had to know. Usually, news about potential promotions were common knowledge. "Big Mike didn't tell me about that."

"And why should he?" Harry asked condescendingly, holding his chin up high. "He knows you won't leave the comfort of the _Herd,"_ he hissed, rolling his shoulders back and violently knocking against Chuck as he strutted past.

The techie sighed. That was going to give Harry a lot of ammunition, and though the barb wasn't particularly hurtful, the other man clearly thought it would be. That meant he could expect more of them coming his way, especially if he decided to put in an application. Now that he knew the position existed, as a twenty-six-year-old working retail, he was obligated to at least consider moving up the chain of command.

He tried to put it out of his mind for the time being. There was a person he had been talking to, and he had a date tonight, with his soulmate. He didn't need to be stressed, he needed to be in a good mood. Chuck looked back towards where Sarah had been waiting and watching the recital, but she was gone. He looked around the store but couldn't see her bright blonde hair anywhere.

Morgan, returned from seeing out the father and daughter, stepped up to the counter curiously, seeing something Chuck was too far away to notice. He picked up a little piece of cardstock, turned it over, and looked up at Chuck with a triumphant and celebratory expression.

"Chuck," he stage-whispered, "Dude. She left you a card! Yes!" Chuck smiled, flattered. Maybe Sarah wanted to be friends. Or maybe he was being naïve and not one, but _two_ beautiful women had flirted with him on the same day.

He doubted Harry could say the same. Chuck wasn't the type to feel smug very often, but he certainly felt it right then, alongside a little bit of extra confidence. There was validation, too – he didn't need his sister's constant concern and matchmaking, because obviously he was fully capable of meeting people on his own.

Then those thoughts flew right out of his head when Morgan held Sarah's contact card up to his face and sniffed it to catch the scent of her perfume or shampoo. Chuck was vaguely alarmed and made a mental note to tell his friend later how very creepy and serial killer-y that was.

* * *

**A/N: I wasn't planning on uploading another chapter, but the positive reviews I received on the first one changed my mind! I do have about the first five chapters of this story finished. I hope this clears up some questions about whether or not Sarah is involved in the story. :) Thank you for reading, and please consider reviewing!**


	3. Chapter Three

Morgan let the issue lay for the rest of the work day, but when they got off at five and jumped into Chuck's car to head back to Echo Park, the little Hispanic started to bring it up once every five minutes. It was kind of exasperating. Chuck finally realized he could ask Morgan to recap the morning's Xbox antics, and his friend was kept busy for the rest of the drive.

The peace wasn't to last, and by the time they were walking through the courtyard, Morgan was back on Chuck about Sarah. Chuck just kept going, expecting Morgan to go get his bike near the gate before he reached his and Ellie's apartment.

"Why _wouldn't_ you call this girl?" Morgan badgered, throwing his arms around animatedly.

"Oh, I don't know," Chuck hedged, glancing sideways at Morgan and adding, "Did you _see_ her?" Sarah was gorgeous and her looks were a little intimidating to guys like them. Then again, Daniela was gorgeous, too, and Chuck couldn't wait to be seeing her again in just a few hours.

"Yes," Morgan emphatically answered, throwing his hands down. "Oh, _man,_ yes. Why is why I'm gonna repeat the question: why _wouldn't_ you call this girl?"

"Because I live on planet _E_ _arth,_ Morgan," Chuck replied with exasperation, not really thinking too hard about it. Simply put, on planet Earth, guys like Bryce got the gorgeous girls and guys like Chuck got the PlayStation. His experiences had backed that up, what with how his gorgeous ex-girlfriend decided to hook up with Bryce and dump him hard.

He thought about it a little more. Morgan was his best friend, and although they had different ideas about what the best option was, he did want what was best for Chuck. If Ellie heard his reasoning now, she would be smacking him for talking down about himself. Daniela had liked him enough to ask him out, so clearly that thing with Bryce and Jill was a fluke, or the rules of the planet weren't all that rigid. Besides, he didn't need to call Sarah because he was already looking forward to a date, and Morgan needed to know so he didn't blow up Chuck's phone while he was busy, if for no other reason.

"And you know what," Chuck abruptly said, putting his hand out in front of Morgan, "No, I'm not going to lie to you. One, there is no reason a girl like that couldn't be attracted to a guy like me." So maybe he wasn't Captain Awesome, but he was a genuinely nice guy who liked to make people laugh and help out when he could. That had to count for something. "Two, I wouldn't call this girl because, maybe, I might already have a date – for tonight! – with a different girl. Another, very beautiful girl."

Morgan's mind was blown. _"What?!"_ He said, way too loudly, prompting a shushing noise out of Chuck. "Two sets of digits in one day?! And you didn't tell me?! Man, you have been holding out! How did you do it? You have to teach me."

Chuck smiled, looking down at his shoes while he walked around the fountain and took a slight left towards his front door. "I don't know, I just – it just sort of happened." It was fate for him to meet Daniela, a sort of promise from the universe that no one really understood, but nothing bound her to like him or want him and yet she still wanted to give him a chance. "Really quickly." One day he was still grieving for his lost relationship from four years ago, and the next, he was totally into being flirted with by a new woman. "Um, why are you following me home?" He stopped in front of the door.

Morgan looked at Chuck as if he were insulted by the question. "Oh, come on," he said, gesturing at the door. "Hey, we're buddies. We're gonna do friend things, and – and I need your computer because mine's still acting up on me," he admitted when Chuck didn't buy it.

"Heh," Chuck snickered. So it wasn't just the display laptop that Morgan had murdered. "Irene Demova?"

"Ah, so beautiful," Morgan wistfully sighed. "And so… deadly."

"Yeah," Chuck let out a long sigh. They always were – and not just the porn stars.

He twisted his key in the lock to let himself in, a little surprised when he didn't hear the click. It was unusual for Ellie to leave their door unlocked, and Devon always double-checked before he went somewhere. Neither of them were particularly paranoid, but bad things could happen and they were all smart adults.

"You know," Morgan started talking again quickly, pushing the door open and letting himself in before Chuck, turning on the lights as he went. "You gotta understand, this is what I've been telling people for I don't know _how_ long-"

Chuck dropped his keys onto the little table by the door and looked up when Morgan just stopped talking. His friend was holding his arms up, and there was a tall figure dressed all in solid black standing on the opposite end of the room, holding the heavy computer from under Chuck's desk.

Chuck grimaced. Burglary, great. Devon would be so much more adequate in handling this.

"Please," he said slowly, reaching down to the hem of his shirt very, very slowly. If he could text 911 then maybe the police would show up before they were kidnapped. They had a pretty decent response time. "Not the computer."

To his utter surprise, the thief looked at the shelf mounted on the wall nearest to them and gently put the computer down on it. She – or he? Maybe? It looked like they were wearing something bulky underneath the black cat burglar outfit, so Chuck couldn't really tell – then put a foot back behind them and raised their hands in a fighting pose.

Morgan and Chuck looked at each other. There was no mistaking that challenge, but there was also no way that either of them could reasonably fight off anyone even remotely familiar with actual martial arts when Morgan struggled to climb through a window and Chuck had the physical flexibility of half-cooked spaghetti. The only reasonable response was to politely step aside and offer their wallets as parting gifts.

Just as Chuck thought they had silently made the agreement, Morgan completely disregarded every scrap of logic and survival sense, grabbing whatever heavy objects he could reach from the table where Chuck put his keys and lobbing them at the burglar.

Ellie's cute little green frog paperweight almost missed the burglar entirely (a good example of Morgan's athletic abilities, for sure) but they snapped out their arm and slapped the heavy frog back at the duo. The frog hit Chuck squarely on his chest, leaving him feeling winded and gasping from sudden pain. The decorative grey ashtray that Morgan hurled next came closer to the mark but was smacked down in the same way, and this one hit Chuck solidly between his legs as he was still pressing against his chest. He doubled over to protect himself and the next thing he knew something was hitting him _hard_ against the back of his head. He reluctantly turned, concerned he might legitimately see stars circling, and saw Morgan holding up the top of a smashed blue and white vase as a weapon.

"Come on, Chuck, do something!" Morgan shouted as if he hadn't just bashed his own friend in the skull.

Sometimes, it was really, really hard not to just wrap his hands around Morgan's throat and squeeze a little bit. Chuck prided himself on not being a violent person, so it really meant something when he started fantasizing about strangling someone, especially his best friend.

The burglar had their head tilted and they were standing back. Chuck wondered if they were actually afraid – he was basically crippled now and Morgan clearly had no hope of winning a real fight, but for some reason they weren't just grabbing what they wanted and making a run for it. Which was weird, because honestly, assuming they had the self-defense abilities of even a teenage girl was probably an overestimation.

He stood up a little bit straighter but wasn't entirely sure he wasn't broken. Dizzy and limping, he stumbled forwards a few steps, putting his arms out placatingly while the burglar snapped into action and grabbed the computer from the shelf.

"Give me the computer-" he started, trying to sound as polite and respectful as possible. It was probably stupid to be worrying about keeping a damn computer instead of keeping himself safe, but the computer was the most expensive thing he owned, and he wasn't really in a position to replace it. For something he used daily, that could be a problem.

The uninvited houseguest obeyed way too fast, actually _throwing_ the computer at him. Chuck caught it in his arms only out of impulse and lost sight of them as they dropped down into a low crouch. Next thing he knew, his legs were literally kicked out from under him. As he lost his balance, another solid kick in the chest sent him flying back towards the wall, where he hit the plaster and thankfully just fell without going through. The burglar caught the computer he'd dropped and put it back on the shelf, resuming their fighting stance in case Chuck got up.

At this point, he had learned his lesson and stayed down. He wasn't totally sure he was capable of standing up, but even if he were, he would still stay down.

His vision was a little unclear but he could tell Morgan picked up a golf club from Devon's golfing carrier by the door. "That's my friend!" Morgan yelled angrily, running at the burglar while letting out a warrior scream.

The burglar pulled the golf club away by the long length as soon as Morgan was within arm's reach, and instead of using it as a bat, they swung it around in circles in front of them like it was a big baton. A big, very intimidating baton. Morgan put his hands up and backed away quickly.

"Okay, look, he's not _that_ good of a friend," the salesman amended amicably.

Morgan got swatted hard with the club at the end of the stick, losing his balance and stumbling. He crashed on top of Chuck, but in the opposite direction, his legs splayed over Chuck's shoulders and his head awkwardly between Chuck's thighs. A loud cracking sound made all three look (Chuck blearily so) at the opposite wall, where the shelf broke and the computer, along with the few other things that had been sitting there, crashed to the floor and shattered into pieces.

The thief – although ninja might have been more accurate after seeing that club swinging around – dropped the golf club to the floor and made a run for the door, sprinting past the men on the ground and leaving the computer smashed into hundreds of pieces on the hard floor.

Chuck squinted and asked Morgan, "Didn't you hang that shelf?"

* * *

It took a few (dozen) minutes for Chuck to feel like he could actually walk again. That ashtray had packed a punch almost as hard as the kick to his chest, and it felt like there was a very real possibility he'd been forcefully sterilized. For a few minutes he'd seriously considered that his sternum might be broken. Morgan scrambled off of him as soon as he could see straight and ran to lock the door, but Chuck had the feeling that they didn't need to worry about a repeat performance. The computer, which the burglar had obviously wanted, was completely destroyed, and now they knew that people were home in the apartment.

When Ellie and Devon got home from their early dinner after work at the hospital, the two were cleaning up the mess from the broken shelf. Morgan took the pieces outside while Chuck picked up what wasn't broken and swept up what was. He was in the process of catching all the little computer pieces with a broom when they came inside and Ellie let out a startled squeak.

"What's going on?" She asked in concern, looking at the small holes in the wall where the shelf had been mounted and the mess that was still on the floor. Devon put his arm around her protectively.

"Ellie," Chuck leaned the broom on the wall and put his hands up to show he was unharmed. "I'm okay. Look, don't freak out-"

Morgan totally missed the point and ran at Chuck's side, jumping up and wrapping his legs around Chuck's waist. Chuck caught Morgan's leg in front of him and brought his hand up to his friend's back while Morgan clung to Chuck's shoulders.

"Chuck's got a date!" Morgan proclaimed loudly and proudly.

Ellie had seemed very distressed when Morgan initially climbed halfway up her brother, but her expression changed entirely when she heard the news. It wasn't quite what Chuck had been about to tell her, but he was grateful that Morgan had as soon as he saw her reaction. Her entire face lit up. She covered her mouth with her hands while her eyes gleamed excitedly.

Devon grinned and nodded approval. "Way to go, Chuck!" He commended encouragingly. "That's awesome." _Hence your nickname_ , Chuck silently noted.

"Well – what's her name?" Ellie asked, dropping her hands to show a smile so big it might have been painful. She hurried closer to Chuck and stood at the edge of the mess on the floor. "Wait, when are you going? Why aren't you getting ready?"

"Oh, uh, well." Chuck personally didn't believe it could possibly take more than forty minutes to prepare for a date, but he doubted Ellie agreed, so he nodded at the floor as an excuse. "I wanted to clean up the stuff that broke."

Now Morgan remembered the other big piece of news. Chuck let go of his leg, finally, and Morgan hopped down to jump closer to Ellie while telling the story with his arms liberally. "Oh, Ellie, you should've seen it, a _ninja_ broke in!" Morgan picked up a knee in a kung-fu pose which Chuck was certain the burglar _hadn't_ done. "He was all, _hi-ya! Hah!_ And I was all, _stay away from my friend!_ And-"

Ellie believed nothing out of Morgan's mouth. Her eyes just dulled a little bit more with every word, entirely unimpressed and quickly growing bored of a story she didn't believe. Chuck interrupted to save them all some trouble. "The shelf he put up fell and the stuff on it broke."

"Oh," Ellie said disappointedly. "I liked that picture frame." She bent down and picked up part of the frame she recognized. The outer edges had broken apart. His sister traced a finger along a coral-colored edge with detailed swirls cut into the thin material.

"Yeah," Chuck acknowledged apologetically. "I saved the photo but the frame was smashed. I'm sorry, El."

Devon sympathetically rubbed her shoulder. "It's alright, babe, we'll find another one like it," he promised. "Chuck, this trash looks electronic."

"Yeah. My computer was on the shelf."

The blond's eyebrows went up and he whistled lowly. "Tough break, bro." Devon walked around Ellie and Chuck to head into the kitchen and gave Chuck a hard pat on the back when he passed by. Chuck winced preemptively and winced harder when it landed. Devon didn't seem to know his own strength.

Ellie reached past Chuck and took the broom before he could pick it back up and finish. "I'll finish up with that later," she briskly said, making a shooing motion with her hands to urge him away. "Oh, God, what are you gonna wear?!"

Chuck looked down at his shirt. It was a little wrinkled from laying on the floor but it wasn't dirty. "What's wrong with what I'm wearing?" He asked with a small frown. Daniela had already seen the shirt, they had already met, there wasn't another first impression to make and there was no point in hiding where he worked. Not that he would particularly want to – there was a difference between being personally unhappy with his position in life and feeling the need to conceal it from a potential girlfriend.

The withering look Ellie sent him made him feel like he had _intentionally_ smashed her favorite photo frame. "Chuck, you never go on a first date in your work clothes!" She scolded, dropping the broom and grabbing his forearm. "Come on!"

* * *

"So." Ellie made conversation while rifling through his closet, shoving shirts aside and making some faces at some of his clothes that Chuck pretended not to see. " _Daniela,"_ she said pointedly.

Chuck nodded from where he was sitting at the edge of his bed, facing her while she looked through his things. He was slouched a little, with his hands in his lap, waiting patiently. Once Ellie set her mind to dressing him, it was easiest just to go along with it.

Ellie prompted a little more, sending quick looks at him every few seconds. "Same Daniela as you-know-who?" He asked, a small smile on her face.

Chuck finally gave in and admitted, "Yeah, she is." He pulled up his shirt sleeve and looked at Ella's name in her handwriting, delighted that now he had seen her write her name somewhere other than on himself. The name on the order form matched the signature printed on his skin. He grinned and stroked his thumb over the loop at the bottom of the uppercase D. "El, I've never liked my own name _so much_ as when she says it."

"And right after your birthday, too!" Ellie exclaimed, pleased. "This is exactly what you need, Chuck."

"If I can even pull this off," Chuck hazarded, leaving his sleeve pulled up. "I haven't dated in a few years," he reminded her needlessly. Soulmates weren't supposed to be about superficially impressing one another, but he could confess in the privacy of his own mind that he really wanted to impress her, at least with his personality.

His sister sent him a short glare and gently chided. "Chuck Bartowski, you are handsome, smart, and funny. You are going to do great."

"Yeah?" Chuck looked to the side and gave his window a shy smile. It did feel really nice to always have her in his corner. "Thanks, Ellie."

"She's nice?" Ellie asked. Chuck kept smiling at how she worried for him, and then as she couldn't help her curiosity. "Pretty?"

"Yeah!" He said, certain of both. Daniela had seemed sweet. Tired, maybe, and he didn't talk to her long enough to get much of a feel for her, but she had seemed sweet and friendly. "And smart," he added. So maybe it didn't take a genius to understand that a hard drive needed replacing, but Chuck had a feeling that that wasn't where his soulmate's smarts ended.

Ellie pulled a hanger out of his closet. It was a collared light-green button down with vertical white and blue stripes. Chuck vaguely remembered wearing it to the beach at some point. "Try this on," she ordered.

He didn't think it would make him look particularly different from any of the other shirts in his closet. "Honestly-"

"I'm a girl," his sister cut him off sternly. Chuck couldn't argue the facts. She pushed the hanger in his direction stubbornly. "I know what girls like."

He shut his mouth and stood up, taking the hanger from her. She knew best. "I'll go change."

* * *

Daniela listened to the news playing on the television while she dressed. Since leaving the Buy More that morning, she had spent several hours at the mall, then come back to her hotel. She took a nap for a couple hours so she wouldn't be too tired to be herself with Chuck, then woke up and watched an episode of _NCIS_ to calm her nerves.

She was not a timid person. Daniela had a healthy view of herself and knew that although she had many flaws, she also had a good number of strengths. None of her flaws made her an inherently bad girlfriend, but she did recognize that some of them, as well as the choices she made for her career and lifestyle, may not be complementary with any given person. She listened to the logical side of her brain that said all relationships involved compromise and tried not to be too nervous.

Besides, she knew next to nothing about Chuck yet. Fingers crossed, that would seriously change in the next few days. What she did know was that he had obviously lived in Burbank – or at least the Los Angeles area – for quite a while and had a job as the Nerd Herd supervisor, which meant a level of commitment and responsibility to a specific store. A specific city. For Daniela, that was a potential red flag. Her lifestyle and her career meant moving around, and it wasn't for everyone. Maybe Chuck would be okay with that as long as she came back often.

"Getting ahead of myself," she muttered, opening up the shopping bags from the mall. "Stupid." Before worrying about making anything work, the first step was this date. She wanted it to go well, but there was no point in worrying about what may or may not follow.

She turned the television up to hear it from the bathroom, where she went to apply her makeup. A small tube of concealer helped to hide the extra redness in her face from her sunburn. She used a matte lipstick to turn her lips a dark pink which looked lovely against her skin, then used the applicator to press some to her eyelids and cheeks and took a couple of makeup brushes to stroke and rub out the lipstick until it looked like soft eyeshadow and subtle blush. After slowly putting on thin eyeliner and mascara, she put her new toys in a zip-lock back and looked at herself in the mirror. Daniela certainly recognized her face, but it didn't look like _her_ face. She looked pretty, and she liked the extra splashes of color, but it felt so weird to think of herself as wearing makeup. She shook her head a little. She used to wear it all the time, and she'd get used to it again if it became a habit.

The news discussed the security conference. Daniela listened to it with a smirk while brushing out her hair. That conference was a big deal, the talk of the town, and she had an invite. It was nice. No, it was _great._ She was moving up and this was proof.

The journalist wondered what Chuck was doing. If he was as excited as she was or had the same butterflies in his stomach. It wasn't long before she'd see him again, her _soulmate_ , and the thought made her chest feel light as a smile curled her pink lips.

Instead of continuing to think about it, she took her little sleeve from her bag and strapped it around her upper thigh, stroking the Velcro to make sure it was firmly in place. She liked to always be prepared to defend herself, and although she could handle herself with her fists, a hidden can of pepper spray was also very useful.

The dress she had bought was a steely grey number with an appropriate V-shaped neckline, snug enough to be alluring but modest enough for her comfort. The dress was less shapely below her waist, wearing like a comfortable skirt below the cinched belt and falling a little above her knees. She strapped on the new sandals she had bought on clearance and was pleased that the black shoes looked a lot nicer with the dress than they did on their own. Lastly, she took her little sleeve from her bag and strapped it around her upper thigh, smoothing the Velcro to make sure it was firmly in place. She liked to always be prepared to defend herself, and although she could handle herself with her fists, a hidden can of pepper spray was also very useful. Her dress covered it up with no problem.

She just wished she had pockets. "This is why I hate dresses," she grumbled, putting her hotel key, phone, and wallet all on the table to make sure she picked them all up before leaving. She had timed her preparations well, and a look at the digital alarm clock showed that she needed to call a taxi just to be sure she would make it on time.

The writer went through her hotel room swiftly, turning off the light and fan in the bathroom and switching the air conditioner to a much lower fan setting for while she was gone. The television was talking about some bank robbery when she stopped and knelt to turn it off. The timing was disappointing – she would have preferred to hear about the major crimes while dressing than the news about the traffic accidents. The anchorman was on the right side of the screen and there was a headshot of a man on the left side as the anchor announced that a bank executive had been fatally shot during the robbery.

Daniela glanced over the victim's face and felt her lips turn in a little frown. Sharp jaw, high cheeks, thick brown hair and very blue eyes. She always hated that they showed the pictures when people died. She knew it honored the victims but to her, seeing their faces just made it that much more depressing to hear when another human being was killed. She pressed the power button before she had to hear the man's name – she didn't want to be thinking about a poor murder victim when she should be focusing on having a good time with one of her very special persons.

"Here we go," she told herself, picking up her three very important belongings from the table.

* * *

Chuck left the apartment early to get to the restaurant before Daniela. He felt like he needed to make sure they had a table, and he definitely didn't want to risk being late or seeming like he wasn't incredibly eager to be there with her. He felt for his car keys in his pocket as he walked past the fountain but stopped when the apartment door opened again and his sister called.

"Chuck!" He turned around and waited while Ellie ran to him slowly, carefully stepping over the concrete in her socks. She held a bouquet up in one hand. "So, these were left over from the party but they're still okay." Ellie turned the flowers around so he could see the beautiful arrangement and pushed it into his waiting hand. "Oh, but _don't_ tell her they were left over," she added sternly. "And, um, don't forget about the old girlfriend rule."

"Right," Chuck agreed, and to prove he knew exactly what she meant, he reiterated, "No mention of Jill." The only old girlfriend he ever really thought about anymore. Ellie might as well have called it the no Jill rule. "You know, I think I'll just try to avoid Stanford entirely." He gave her a small smile. Avoid Jill, avoid Bryce, avoid expulsion – that sounded good.

Ellie smiled at him proudly and he knew he'd said the right thing. "Aces, Charles," she said admiringly, putting her hands on his shoulders and pulling him into a quick hug. "You're aces."

He smiled nostalgically while she stepped back to beam at him. It felt like his prom night all over again. "A Dad quote," he noted fondly. "I'm impressed. Love you, sis."

"I love you," Ellie returned quickly and smoothed her hands down her blue scrubs. "Have fun."

"I will," Chuck promised, then made a face and said, "I'll try." He didn't want to jinx it.

Chuck took the flowers and turned back to the gates, walking off to his car while looking at the soft pastels in the bouquet. They were pretty. He hoped Daniela would like them, even though they weren't the typical red roses.

Behind him, he heard Morgan's voice mumbling something and his sister begging him to just go home.

* * *

Chuck made it to Centanni with more than enough time to spare. There were still enough people for the restaurant to be a little bit animated, but enough tables were open for him to choose a good one against a wall. They could talk semi-privately but the doors were still a clear shot away. Soulmates aside, Chuck did try to keep in mind that Daniela didn't really know him.

He held the flowers on his lap for the first five minutes, then his hand grew tired of holding them and he carefully set them down on the stems, the flowers themselves propped up against the wall gingerly. Their colors looked even prettier under the reddish-pink mood lights, he thought. He had never been to this restaurant on a date before.

When ten more minutes went by and he checked his watch, he started to regret being so early. Maybe he had jumped the gun slightly. He just really had wanted to make sure Daniela didn't have to wait for him, but the longer he sat there with his own thoughts, the more he worried that being too early was a bad thing. He didn't want to make her feel uncomfortable if she knew how long he had been waiting when she was the one being punctual. Not to mention that the waiter who had brought him some water was looking over the table pretty often and kept sending Chuck sympathetic glances. Someone thought he was being stood up.

After twenty minutes of sitting, Chuck had stopped getting excited every time the heavy wooden doors opened, but he did still look up. About five minutes before their agreed-upon time, he looked up as the door chimed and saw her letting herself in. She smiled and said something to the host, who gestured in Chuck's direction with his arm. Daniela looked and saw Chuck, then smiled and headed towards him.

Daniela hoped that the nerves in her stomach weren't visible on her face. She had a very good poker face, but she was consciously trying not to use it. When she met Chuck at the store, he hadn't tried to hide his excitement at all, giving her the impression that he tended to be open about how he felt. She wanted to match that if she could, not leave him guessing.

Chuck stood up when she came closer, trying not to stare at his date. Ella looked gorgeous, had even dressed up a little, and Chuck really was glad now that Ellie had insisted he do the same. Her metallic-colored dress outlined the frame of her body attractively and the hemline made her legs look like they went on for miles, sweet and cute for a date while being practical in the warm September weather. She looked him over while he did the same to her, taking advantage of the opportunity and pretending not to notice what he was doing. He cleaned up nicely; the colors in his shirt really looked great with his coloring.

"Wow," Chuck breathed, remembering to speak. Daniela's eyes seemed to sparkle. "You – you look-"

She smiled a little and resisted the urge to look away and hide her face. "Thank you, handsome," she said, giving her own compliment.

Chuck felt a rush of pride but finished what he was saying anyway. She deserved to hear it. "Stunning," he decided was the right adjective, giving her a sincere smile.

They took their seats after an awkward fumble where Chuck, meaning to be a gentleman, pulled out her chair at the same time as she went to, resulting in a light smack of wood against her hand for which he apologized profusely, embarrassed. It just made her laugh – it had been a long time since anyone tried to do that kind of gesture for her, and it was somehow even more endearing that it went a little bit wrong. He pushed her chair in for her when she sat down and Daniela indulged, though privately hoped it wasn't going to become a habit.

Chuck sat down again in his own seat, looking at her from across the table. He was struck again by how beautiful she was. The mood lighting made her brown hair shine with a rosy red undertone and brought out the color of her lipstick. Daniela smiled at him to ease the uncertainty she could clearly see in his fidgety posture.

He remembered after too long of a pause that he had a greeting present for her. Daniela could see his eyes widen a bit as he hurried to reach down under the table and she sat back, bemused. Chuck came back up with an artistically-wrapped bouquet of autumnal flowers, which he handed to her around the side of the table.

"They're-" He started to say, rubbing the back of his neck.

"Oh!" She was pleasantly surprised. The wrap felt warm and substantial in her hand, heated by his touch. The flowers were beautiful, though she couldn't name with certainty any single one. She particularly liked the long, light orange petals on one tall flower.

"They're for you," Chuck said, looking at her hopefully. He wondered again if he should have brought roses instead. Everyone liked roses. Seeing her eyes light up made him relax, and he sat back further on his seat as she gently touched a flower petal with her fingertip. Daniela looked up at his questioning eyes and smiled warmly, right as he remembered that some people were allergic to pollen in flowers. "Oh my God, I'm an idiot," he said promptly, groaning into his hands. She was touching them, so she was clearly fine with flowers, but it would have been so awful if she _were_ allergic and he, like an idiot, had just given her a ton of pollen! "I never even thought to ask if you were allergic."

Daniela laid the flowers across her lap and laughed a little bit. His belated concern shouldn't have made her laugh. She liked flowers. She tried to remember the last time anyone gave her flowers and she didn't think a man ever had before – not as a romantic gesture, at least. Once a guy had given her some sunflowers as a thank you for free tutoring.

"Relax, Chuck," she suggested, keeping her voice smooth and comforting. "It's okay. It's sweet. I'm not allergic, and I like the flowers. Thank you."

Chuck shifted around in his seat a little and gave a wry smile over his momentary anxiety. Daniela was being really nice and now he worried he had overreacted to something minor. "I ordered garlic knots and mozzarella sticks, I hope that's okay," he said, then stressed himself out again – what if she was offended that he ordered for her, like a douchebag? He hurried to explain himself. "They were looking at me weird so I felt like I had to order something."

The journalist was almost sympathetic. If she had known he were so nervous, she wouldn't have bothered trying to calm down from her own first date jitters. She wanted to tell him that he didn't need to be so anxious with her. They were soulmates, and maybe it was silly, but that mattered to her, and she was giving him the benefit of the doubt.

"Ooh, I love mozzarella!" She assured him with a bright grin, putting a hand over her stomach. He couldn't see the motion, but she was really hungry. "How long were you waiting?" She had to ask, now that she knew he had felt obliged to go ahead and order appetizers.

"Not–" Chuck stumbled a bit, not wanting to lie but also not wanting to admit he got there so early. In hindsight, it felt a little stupid. "Not long."

Daniela could basically see the anxiety hovering over him like a cloud. She knew she had to dispel it but wasn't sure how. Chuck was acting very sweet, and clearly didn't want to offend her. She really appreciated that sentiment and was curious if he would feel the same about her open emotions. It felt weird not to police her features, especially after the last several months, to let herself smile and laugh just when something made her happy.

Chuck watched her while she thought, trying to see through his eyelashes and not make it super obvious that he was just observing her. She was beautiful to look at but he wanted to see more than just her face, more than her incredibly green eyes or the adorable, faint freckles dusting her nose that he hadn't noticed earlier. He wanted to know what she was thinking, how she was feeling about him, about the flowers, and about the restaurant. She had chosen the venue but Chuck was the one who even mentioned it to begin with, so in a way he felt it reflected on him.

 _We need to be talking,_ Daniela thought to herself firmly when she realized the silence was uncomfortable. Chuck kept pretending not to be looking at her – and Daniela was okay with that he wanted to look at her, even a little bit flattered – but the fact he was hiding it, and that she could hear the very quiet sound of his heel popping skittishly on the floor, told her that he was far from cozy with the silence, and Daniela was aware enough of her weaknesses to acknowledge that small talk wasn't her strong suit, not when it had to be genuine. She wouldn't dare not be genuine with this man.

The waiter came back and while he was bent over slightly to refill Chuck's cup of water, he sent the gamer a sort of approving and encouraging smile – sort of like a _don't worry, she came after all_.

Then, he stood up and said to Daniela that he would bring her a glass of ice water when he came back and offered to take their drink orders. Chuck opened his mouth a little but didn't know what to say – was this a wine occasion? Daniela saw his indecision and how his eyes flashed quickly to her as if in question. She looked up at the waiter and politely asked for a Sauvignon, if they had any, and Chuck followed suit with the same drink. He didn't know the difference between many wines, anyway.

Daniela hoped Chuck hadn't felt obligated to go with wine after she did; she didn't mean to take the lead, she just wanted some alcohol. A pleasant little buzz would help her relax and let her guard down, and as a bonus would help her fall asleep easier after she got back to her hotel.

Liquid courage or no, she wasn't going to wait until they had their appetizers to even say another word. This wasn't okay, it was awkward, and her first date with her soulmate did not need to be awkward.

Across from her, Chuck was thinking the same thing. Their conversation had come easily enough at the Buy More before he had read her name; and sure, maybe he had never exactly been great at flirting, but he was an intelligent and compassionate person capable of having engaging discussions. There was no excuse for sitting there quietly when the whole point of meeting over dinner was to talk to each other.

"So," Chuck started.

Simultaneously, Daniela began, "Okay-"

They both shut up, blinking at each other. Daniela's eyes turned warm in amusement as Chuck started to laugh. His voice was a low tenor, and Daniela happened to like men whose voices were in that range. She liked his laugh.

"I'm sorry," Chuck said, gesturing at her with one hand. "You can go first."

"I was just going to say we need to start somewhere," she chuckled. Although interrupting each other hadn't been what she had had in mind.

Chuck smiled, glad that they were on the same wavelength and trying to memorize the sound of her quiet laugh. He made it a personal goal to hear what she sounded like when her laugh was fuller and richer.

"I was going to ask if there was anything you wanted to know first," he offered, an open book. Chuck really didn't have that many secrets; there were some things he would prefer not to talk about, and some confidences he shared with others that he didn't have the right to discuss, but as far as his own life went, Ella was welcome to ask just about anything.

"Hm…"

Daniela hummed softly while looking at him. She pursed her lips to the left side of her mouth, thinking intently while trying not to seem too critical. It was an intriguing offer, and an interesting conversation starter that she had never encountered before. While she was well aware that there was no implication she could _only_ ask one question, the first one would set the tone, and she wanted to learn the basics of his personality as quickly as possible so she could conform to them.

 _No,_ she halted her thought process, screaming at herself in her mind. _No, don't conform._ She shouldn't need to conform to her soulmate's ideals and she shouldn't be trying to mold herself into any archetype in a personal relationship at all. That skill needed to be left behind in Iraq, or at least remain packed up in her travel bag.

She didn't want to learn what traits would complement his and then make herself fit them. She didn't want to manipulate him into liking her. Habits were hard to break but this one was fucking important to shatter immediately. She wanted to learn about his personality because she wanted to… _understand_ him. That seemed better. She just wanted to understand him, for a start. How he thought, felt, acted, perceived things. And her challenge was to think of a single question which would reflect something innate about the type of person he was without creating an incredibly serious or somber tone for the rest of the night.

Chuck really hadn't meant for it to be such a difficult question – 'what do you want to know' seemed simple. He knew what he wanted to know about her, which was approximately everything. Given that they had to start with much more specific questions and answers, he understood a pause, but not the concentration that she was investing into her thoughts.

He felt like he was being stared down, and for some reason that made him a little on edge. He had no idea what she did for a living, and it dawned on him that she could have devoted her life to analyzing _people_ , and in that case, what did she see? Or, if that wasn't the case, what was she trying to discern from his slightly-more-casual-than-hers outfit and his open but slightly nervous smile?

He made a mental note not to make any sort of invitation like that ever again on any future first dates, because this was a special level of discomfort he hadn't even _considered_ that he might feel while with Daniela. Her gaze wasn't judgmental, but it sure was… perceptive, maybe? No, analytical. She was looking for something. He wasn't sure whether or not he hoped that she found it. It really depended on what it was.

Daniela decided quickly once she had an idea. Her extended silence couldn't have been much longer than a minute, but any single minute was approximately eight in first date time. "Do you prefer dogs or cats?" She asked, keeping it simple and, she guessed, fairly standard.

"Dogs!" Chuck blurted, giving her a bewildered look for a second. He had a hard time believing that was what she had spent so long choosing to ask. "I'd love a dog someday," he shared, the tension leaving his shoulders. He'd been starting to think she was going to ask him one of those God-awful moral dilemma problems his philosophy professors loved. "My apartment now has a no-pets policy."

Daniela smiled slightly because she preferred dogs, too. Cats were more practical for her lifestyle, but she couldn't help that she just _adored_ dogs. And she extrapolated, quickly, some of what that might mean as to his personality. Dependent? – No, she didn't have enough information to make that judgment. Friendly, certainly, you had to be friendly to be enthusiastic about dedicating time, energy, money, and affection to an animal. Empathetic, for sure, and possibly playful. In her experience, people who loved dogs weren't necessarily dependent, but they tended to thrive with less personal space and favor independent endeavors less than cat people.

"What did you think I was going to ask?" She asked him with a crooked smile, apologetic for making him all tense and worried.

"I don't know!" He laughed, shrugging his shoulders and holding his entire body looser. He looked young and carefree then. It was a good look on him. "I was just hoping you weren't going to ask some moral dilemma problem. You know, this is – there isn't a script, you know, a list of questions to practice for."

Daniela blinked twice and shook her head a bit. "This isn't a test!" She objected, laughing at how much weight he was placing just on his answers to date questions. They revealed something about a person, but they didn't state all of who that person was. "I'm not interviewing you!" She giggled.

"You kind of are, though, right?" Chuck countered, and Daniela's laughter faded, looking at him with concern. That was what he thought? Chuck saw the look on her face and realized she didn't understand what he meant, so he elaborated quickly before she felt bad. "Not – not the same way as a job would be, sure, but that's kind of what a first date is. An interview."

The journalist clicked her mouth shut and nodded thoughtfully. She supposed that was a way to look at it. Based on a first date, people chose whether or not they were willing to invest time and effort into creating more of a relationship. It, like an interview, was the first real opportunity for people to get a feeling for the other person's work ethic, or in this case, if they were partner material.

"I'm a little nervous," Chuck admitted, pulling his hand through his hair again and then scolding himself to stop touching his hair at a dinner table. He put his hand back in his lap. "I've not really been on any in a while – there was this woman, I mean, at Stanford, but…" He looked back up at Daniela and her green eyes, so different from Jill's. Her inner wrist was in towards herself, so he couldn't see his name, but he knew it had to be there. What was he doing? This was his soulmate he was just about to bore with his ranting. "… But that was a long time ago," he said, redirecting himself and giving her his best, cutest smile. "And her restraining order was very specific."

Daniela laughed, startled by the change of track that he very quickly took. There was some baggage there, and she didn't need to be a career investigator to see it. The fact that he very deliberately changed the subject, though, told her that he wanted to leave his exes in the past, and she gracefully ignored the brief reminiscence.

Chuck beamed, glad his joke was well-received. Being himself was just starting to come back to him, and Ellie's friends probably wouldn't have found his sense of humor all that charming. Ella seemed like she enjoyed it. It made him a little bit thrilled that he could joke about his past and turn away from thoughts of Jill so easily.

Daniela moved their talk forward by leaning back on the interview analogy. "I'd like to see what those dating applications would look like," she teased.

"Cuddling, check yes or no," Chuck joked back with her, drawing an invisible checkmark on the tablecloth. "Favorite snacks for a marathon, list three. Please list number of first-degree murder convictions."

His offhanded humor had her laughing again, and her happiness felt contagious. Chuck smiled with her, feeling the last of his nerves melting away and being replaced with hope and contentment. Daniela pointed at him briefly with a finger.

"Okay, you're funny," she accused, playful. "I like that. That gets a checkmark."

"Funny guy, that's me. That's me," Chuck agreed easily. "What about you?"

Daniela's face became more serious as she lamented to him, "I am sadly not very funny." Chuck was inclined to disagree. "But, I am _excellent_ at petting dogs," she promised, nodding wisely and not-so-subtly sneaking in that she loved them, too.

"What about hugging?" Chuck quizzed, grinning.

"Oh, I got top marks on my Standardized Hugging Test," she boasted with a straight face.

Chuck laughed while the waiter came back by their table briefly to drop off their drinks – a glass of ice water for the lovely brunette, and a wine glass of dark red liquid for both of them. The waiter mentioned their appetizers would be out soon and left, and Chuck just looked at Daniela fondly over the table.

"What happened to not being funny?" He asked her, raising his eyebrows. That had been a very funny bit of sass.

Daniela bit her tongue lightly between her teeth while looking to the side at the little tealight glowing in the small metal lantern. "Okay," she allowed, pleased with them both. "Maybe I'm a little bit funny."

"Well, the dog-petting and the SHT scores would've made up for it, just in case you weren't," Chuck reassured her and perked up as he remembered what he definitely needed to ask. "Oh, I can't believe I almost forgot, I wanted to know, is it okay to call you Ella?"

"Ella?" Daniela repeated, puzzled. She canted her head towards him with a look of amused confusion, wondering where he had heard that or when the name had started.

"It's just, it's sort of a nickname," Chuck explained, abashed. He really wasn't sure he should admit to having looked forward to meeting her every day since he was like three. Was that too cliché? He didn't want to seem lonely, either. "I kind of got it into my head. I would look at your name, and at some point I started thinking of you as Ella."

"Ella," Daniela repeated to herself quietly. It wasn't a name she would have chosen for herself, but the knowledge that it was from her soulmate – that he had cared enough to give her an affectionate moniker before even meeting – was a little bit heartwarming. "Hm, I think I could be okay with that."

Chuck guessed from her phrasing that she didn't use Ella often, if at all. "What do people normally call you?" It would be difficult to make the switch in his head after so long, but her comfort came first. The very least he could do was to call her by her preferred name.

Daniela guessed where he was heading by his question. "Dani," she said to simply answer, then repeated, "But I like Ella." She gave him a small smile so he'd know that she was welcoming him to continue using that name. "Alright. What's your question?"

Chuck frowned because he had just asked. "My question?"

"You gave me the first question of anything I wanted to know about you," Daniela reminded, explaining herself more clearly. "I asked, cats or dogs. It's a character evaluation, kind of like you said. Because the people who favor dogs or cats tend to share some character traits." Daniela hadn't intended to reveal her reasoning behind the question, but after Chuck showed his understanding of a first date as a type of interview, she didn't feel like she was being too critical for her thinking process anymore. "So what's yours?"

She picked up her wine glass and sipped at the red. It tickled her throat going down, and it tasted like it couldn't be a very expensive wine. The appearance made up for what the taste lacked. She was in a nice restaurant with candles and mood lighting and drinking wine with her soulmate. Cheap wine or not, it was romantic.

"Oh, uh." Chuck looked like the kid called on in class for daydreaming. He felt it, too. "I didn't prepare those," he said by way of excusing his hesitation. Daniela crossed her ankles under the table and waited patiently, gesturing with her hand for him to take his time. "Um."

While Chuck was trying to remember every smart or deep question he had ever been asked, their waiter came and brought the appetizers out. They smelled like they were all baked fresh, and Daniela couldn't decide which looked more appetizing – the buttery-looking, herb-crusted, perfectly-golden bread, or the golden-brown sticks of breadcrumbs _begging_ to be smothered in marinara, smelling aromatically of still-sizzling mozzarella cheese. He saw the look of sudden, ravenous hunger on her face and smiled while he was still puzzling over what to ask – Chuck really did make the right call.

He smiled while she took one of the small plates and filled it with a couple of garlic knots and a few cheese sticks so hot that she had to yank them off the serving platter and rub the grease off on her napkin as fast as she could. He loved it when his dining companions shared his tastes in food. The alternative was to argue and bicker about which restaurants were best, what cuisines were the tastiest, like he did with Morgan. Morgan loved Chinese food, and insisted that they needed to eat dinner in Chinatown every time they went out. Chuck usually won those arguments, but not always.

Oh, Morgan. Thinking of his best friend made Chuck grin about hours spent playing the most mindless hypothetical games ever. The sandwich one was completely worthless but maybe the three-object one wasn't completely ridiculous.

" _Oh,_ I got it," Chuck declared. Daniela looked up to see his dorky grin and smiled back automatically while pulling a small piece off of her burning-hot bread knot. "You're stuck on an island," Chuck proposed. "What are the three things you want to have? People can count."

Daniela almost scoffed. The answer was obvious. She wanted off the freaking island.

"Satelli-"

"You can't say a phone or a life raft!" Chuck hurried to cut her off. Those were the given rules; nothing too obvious. Anyone could ask for a phone or a boat, and they demonstrated common sense, but nothing too personal. Still, it was good to know Ella had common sense.

The journalist pouted and popped the piece of bread in her mouth. The flaky texture almost made her moan. She thought back to her various (mis)adventures since she began to travel and write, and about the nature of the question. A hypothetical, where the obvious answers were eliminated, forcing creativity or innovation, both of which hinted at some aspect of the respondent's priorities or abilities.

"Okay," she said slowly.

If she were stuck on an island, presumably alone, then adding another person wasn't going to help (unless she could specify the person had to have a satellite phone, but she doubted that was allowed). It would just mean another mouth to feed. Speaking of feeding, she was going to need food for herself, and to avoid becoming the food for other creatures. Food led to water, and Daniela knew that was even more important. Humans could go almost a week without food. It would be incredibly painful, but endurable. Three days without water, though, and she'd be toast. So, with two vital issues which obviously needed solutions, that left one more object she could have. If Daniela could feed and protect herself, that was great, but would mean nothing if she couldn't survive the rest of nature.

"Okay," she said again, ready to answer. Her dining partner looked up curiously. Chuck had piled his plate with garlic knots and mozzarella sticks to rival hers, still leaving some on the platters. Daniela doubted they'd be able to finish their meals if they ate all of this food, but she was up to the challenge. "A knife," she said first. "A good one, at least nine inches, and serrated. A big supply of iodine tablets-" She caught herself. Any supply, no matter how big, was finite. She needed something that wasn't. "No, wait. A pot. And an insulated sleeping bag, the really good and big ones from sporting goods stores."

Chuck's eyebrows had gone up into his hairline, or so he felt. The game was really supposed to be about how one would stave off the boredom if they were isolated for a long time, but Daniela had seriously thought of it in terms of mere survival. And apparently, she didn't want anyone else's help in surviving. That was… interesting.

"Okay, now you have to explain why you went into so much detail with the knife," he commented, putting his hands up defensively and mocking a frightened face. Ella rolled her eyes, but there wasn't any irritation in how she looked at him.

"A good knife means I can protect myself against predators, hunt for meat, and cut wood, all with one tool," she explicated. Daniela prided herself on being a very practical person. "The pot is for boiling water until it's safe to drink, using the fire I will make from the wood I cut with my big, serrated knife." She gave him a sassy little smirk. He wouldn't be laughing about her weapons when the hypothetical version of her didn't keel over in the first week of island-living. "The sleeping bag will keep me warm, yeah, but it can also shield me from animals at night, and insects, so not only am I not being eaten, or bitten by something venomous, I'm also not getting any diseases from mosquitos or ticks."

"Oh, you're a real survivalist, aren't you?" Chuck asked, impressed with the level of consideration that went into her answer. The last time they played, Morgan's chosen objects had been a portable DVD player, a big book of DVDs, and a "boatload" of batteries, and neither of them had wasted time worrying about having potable water.

Daniela was becoming more interesting by the minute. Chuck wasn't sure what to make of her answers, but he had some educated guesses. They were hard to verify without further explanation from her, but he guessed that she was independent, thoughtful, and focused. She immediately assumed that she would die and made sure that her answer would provide her with the tools she needed to prevent that from happening. She must be a pretty serious person, too, for her brain to skip right to 'imminent death' mode.

Daniela kept enjoying her appetizers, laughing a little bit at his comment. She wasn't bothered because he didn't seem like she had ruined his game, but she saw the questions in his eyes when she had responded. What she said wasn't what he expected. He really had no idea, though, and as happy as she was with herself and her abilities, it made her kind of sad that she and her soulmate were evidently of very different perspectives. He saw fun and Daniela saw danger. Even now, on a romantic date with her soulmate, she was wearing pepper spray in a thigh strap, had strong bobby pins in her hair, and carried Kevlar string threaded around a sandal strap.

The waiter came back to take their orders, and only then did Daniela realize she hadn't even looked at the menu. She asked the waiter what was good and he recommended spinach and chicken-stuffed ravioli. Daniela asked if the dish included cheese and after the waiter confirmed, she requested the ravioli. Chuck ordered a safe favorite he'd had a couple times before from memory, and made a note to himself that his soulmate appeared to love cheese. She had even made a face of ecstasy when she first tasted the mozzarella sticks.

This time when the waiter left, there was no discomfort in the quiet that followed. Daniela and Chuck were both munching their way through the delicious food they already had, and smiling at each other in the meantime when their eyes met. Daniela was trying to steal peeks at her soulmate and felt an awful lot like a high schooler with her first crush again; she didn't know that Chuck felt the same way.

They ate in a very comfortable, companionable silence for a couple of minutes before Chuck thought of another question to ask. He was incredibly pleased that the ice was broken, and broken so well at that. He felt like he had a much better understanding of his soulmate as a person now than he would have if he had tried to make small talk with her about the weather, or her favorite color. While he wanted to know her favorite color, and still knew his understanding was extremely primitive and lacked a _lot_ of information, he felt like it was significant progress for the ten, maybe fifteen minutes that they had been together, especially compared to how awkward they had been when the waiter took their drink orders.

"You, uh, you said you use your computer?" Chuck phrased it as a question, but he remembered very clearly what she said when they met. He was going to remember their first meeting for the rest of his life, he was sure of it. "What do you do?"

"I'm a writer," Daniela said, truthfully but painfully aware that she was omitting quite a bit. She considered being fully up front with him, but, again, decided that it was best to take care not to directly lie and ease more information onto him. She didn't want him to change his mind about her or freak him out before they had any more than a few jokes between them. "I started working for a network right after school – Columbia," she said, because she was very proud of her school, and she thought maybe he'd be a little impressed. "But a few years ago I decided… well, I had some money saved up, and I decided to take a leap and go independent. I like the freedom."

Chuck digested that for a few seconds. His soulmate went to one of the most prestigious Ivy Leagues in the country, like him. _Except she actually graduated._ Shaking that off, he asked himself what it must be like to be her own boss. That had to be neat. Except one couldn't exactly receive a paycheck from themselves the same way Chuck got one from the Buy More company, so making ends meet as a freelancer, or independent writer, had to be very challenging and take a lot of determination and talent.

"So then, what brings you here to Burbank?" He asked, genuinely interested. He had never met a professional writer before.

"A work opportunity," she said vaguely, and then seemed to realize it. She shrugged her shoulders apologetically. "There's a conference I'm attending on national security. I have a degree in political science, it's kind of up my alley. It may or may not develop into something for my portfolio, I'm not sure yet. So what are you interested in doing?" Daniela liked talking about her projects when the person she was with actually wanted to hear about them and could be trusted not to blab, but the fact was, no matter how interested and sweet, Chuck was still not someone she knew well enough to trust with sensitive information, so she turned it around.

"Interested in?" Chuck laughed and prayed it didn't sound like he was insecure or hiding something. "Well, uh…" He took another admiring look at the strong, independent, and very smart woman across the table. Her nails may be chipped, but he doubted her fingers were chafed like his. "Probably not the same sort of things that you find interesting," he confessed. He didn't want to outright say that, as an adult man, his most passionate hobbies were video gaming and fiddling with old or broken electronics.

Daniela's expression was something of a question in itself but she schooled her face a little too quickly for him to interpret it. "What took you to the Buy More?" She asked instead. She definitely caught that he didn't line his interests – which he apparently didn't particularly want to share – up with his job.

"I, ah, after I left college," Chuck picked his words carefully so he didn't lie and say he graduated, but also didn't really imply otherwise. He knew he was innocent, but a lot of people assumed that because the school didn't believe him, he had been lying. "I was looking for a job close to home. Morgan, my best friend, he already worked there, so he said I should apply and, well, with a name like Stanford on my application-"

"Easy in, right?" Daniela guessed. "Stanford, wow."

"Columbia, wow," Chuck replied, giving her a small smile. He was glad she was impressed, but wasn't looking forward to seeing that change.

"What's your degree in?" She asked. It took all of Chuck's self-control not to flinch – her question reminded him so much of the absolute social failure that had been his chat with the redhead only a day ago.

"Oh. Um. I. I was an engineering major," Chuck told her after fumbling for a moment through his own internal cringe.

Daniela turned his words over in her head. That was an odd way to phrase it. A major was a field of study, not a degree, and she had very specifically asked about his degree. "But you didn't graduate?" She queried.

Chuck looked down at his cleared appetizer plate. As impressive as it was that Daniela was perceptive and quick to pick up on that, it was really hard not to be ashamed of what had happened and how he was left in the dust by the people who had been his peers at school.

"No…" He knew the next question would be why, and Chuck just wanted to rip the band aid off and plead his case. Daniela was watching him with interest and confusion, but he didn't want to look up at her, and that made her wary. "Um, my roommate tipped off a professor to – to search our dorm room a few weeks before finals," he mumbled. "They found tests, er, stolen, current tests, under my bed. I still don't know how they got there, please, believe me." He looked up at her honestly, not trying to hide any of his feelings – not the shame, or humiliation, or even the insecurity and fear that his soulmate would decide her feelings for him based on this one awful thing he hadn't had any influence over. "I didn't cheat."

He practically held his breath while Daniela looked at him, giving him the same intense, close attention that she had before she asked if he liked cats or dogs. Her eyes moved over his face, looking at details. It made him self-conscious.

Stealing tests was a big deal. It didn't seem like it in the long run, not when she considered the brutalization and violence she had seen so recently, but that kind of academic dishonesty was usually part of a larger snowball. Anyone who stole tests had very questionable ethics, and Daniela didn't think it was a complete deal-breaker – not when her soulmate was involved – but it was something she needed to actually judge and think about.

She looked at Chuck's eyes, his forehead, and his lips, looking for micro expressions. Despite a lack of official training, she was incredibly good at reading people for lies. It was how she learned to lie so convincingly herself.

"You didn't steal, buy, sell, or use the tests?" Daniela questioned, leaving no wiggle room for him to make himself look good through technically not lying.

Her voice was low and focused entirely on him. It was really not the way that he would have wanted such dedicated attention. He looked into her eyes. It was humiliating to go through this again, but if his soulmate would believe him, it would be worth it. " _No,"_ he insisted truthfully, "I didn't. I never understood really what happened or why my – my roommate would do that to me. He had to have done it, right?" He wasn't really asking her and he mentally told himself to shut up, but his stress made him lose control over his own mouth. "Because he was the only one who could have put them there."

Daniela watched his face for anything minute while he spoke, and for a few solid seconds after. She couldn't find anything that suggested deception, and if she was going to go off of her current – albeit somewhat lacking – conceptions of Chuck, he wasn't a very good liar to begin with. She certainly noticed how he stumbled when he mentioned his roommate, but that was about his relationship _to_ that person, as if he'd been about to say something other than 'roommate' and thus was very unlikely to have anything to do with the stolen tests.

When it came down to it, the journalist trusted her own instincts. They had proven over and over again to be sharp and well-tuned. In this circumstance, there was an additional and very emotional layer, though, of whether or not she was willing to give Chuck additional trust that she normally wouldn't offer anyone. He was her soulmate, and she knew that that wasn't always some great, perfect promise, but she wanted it to be. She wanted her soulmates to be good people.

At the end of the day, she decided, she wanted to trust her soulmates. She thought Chuck was telling the truth, so she decided to believe that, and let the matter drop. Finality, decisiveness. He said he was innocent, she believed he wasn't lying to her, so he was innocent and expelled for something he hadn't done. That was it, that was what she believed. Her mind was made up. If she was wrong to trust him, it would hurt like a bitch, but it would hurt even more in the long term to live her whole life without being brave enough to trust.

"Okay," she said. Her tone was devastatingly simple after all that stress Chuck had been through in the last few minutes. His shoulders sagged. That was it? "I believe you," she stated matter-of-factly, and just like that, the scrutiny she had been placing on him was gone. Honestly, he wouldn't have been surprised if she told him that she was actually a freelance interrogator.

"You do?" He asked, not to sound shocked and guilty but because he was so relieved. The longer it took her to respond, the worse the fear had gotten. He understood she needed to think – it was a big deal. But oh, his heart had been in his throat.

"I'm good at reading people and I don't think you're lying," she said in summary. "You're my soulmate, Chuck. I don't want to be on my guard with you. I choose to trust you."

Chuck looked down at his lap. His hands were shaking. He smiled with such relief that it bled from his pores, and it made Daniela want to ask how many people, friends or lovers or coworkers, had ended their relationships with him right here with that conversation. She knew better – that would be cruel.

The woman took the conversation back to its more pleasant track. It was awful that her soulmate had been betrayed by someone he had clearly felt strongly about. She gently prompted him forward, away from those painful feelings and encouraging him to think just about getting to know each other, recovering the feelings of warmth and comfort that they had enjoyed not long ago.

"Engineering," she said. "What kind?"

"Oh, uh…" This was surreal. She was staying. Not only was she staying, she _believed_ him. It didn't seem like anyone but his family believed him and suddenly here was his soulmate saying she believed him, just like that, and this huge weight off of his chest was gone. "Software, computers," he said, feeling like the world was moving awfully fast around him, still computing. "I've always liked computers. Did you always want to be a writer?"

Daniela snickered. "Oh, hell no. No, that only came up when I was in college, learning how miserable the world is sometimes and how awful things get swept under the rug for the sake of money, or fame, or capital." Chuck tilted his head. That went somewhere darker much faster than he anticipated. Daniela swallowed several sips of wine before she finished with, "I decided to be one of those people who actually cleans the house instead of moving furniture around to hide the dirt." Chuck didn't think it was his imagination that she held herself higher.

She didn't like talking about why she chose to be what she became, but for all the emotional difficulty associated with her personal journey, Daniela knew her intentions were good and she took a hard road for the sake of sticking up for people who couldn't stick up for themselves. She was proud. Maybe a little too proud, sometimes, but she was trying to work on that.

"What about you?" She asked, turning the question back and reciprocating his interest. "Where do you want to be?"

Chuck blinked owlishly at her as if he didn't understand. He opened his mouth, had no words, shut his mouth, looked at the table, and lifted his head again with a look of bafflement. He shook his head slightly while he recovered, and he puffed out a short breath before talking. When he did, it was with slightly sad amazement.

"I… you know, it's been a long time since someone asked me that, and I'm not even sure anymore."

"Oh?" That was a heavy story, too, she gathered. Okay. They were adults. They could handle heaviness.

It was hard to think of what he used to want to be, and although he had earlier thought to himself with confidence that he didn't want to hide any part of his identity from Daniela, he felt a sinking feeling in his stomach that told him he had been wrong. It was one thing if he never really came into his own, but this was worse. He had had ambitions and then… halted.

Chuck sighed. "I used to think," he started to say, then looked up at her and established that he was going to exaggerate. "And I was mostly joking, it was more like a dream than a realistic goal, I don't have that massive of an ego," he promised. Daniela smiled a bit at him like she knew exactly what he meant. "You know, _wait until you're thirty and you'll have a software empire_. A mogul of computer programming. That sort of thing. And now…"

The writer listened to his pause with sympathy. And now, indeed. A lot could change in four years, especially when someone was expelled from school and had some ugly mark like that on their educational record. Hell, a decade ago she had never dreamed she would write or travel for a career. She used to want to be an attorney.

"I still love the old hobbies," Chuck stated softly, thinking of the time he disassembled the broken toaster, fixed it, and put it all back together again. Ellie had already bought a new one but insisted on using the one he had fixed. He liked puzzles. He liked understanding why things worked and making them do as he wanted. Computers were easy, because there was always a right or wrong answer, and there was no moral complication over making demands of binary code. They were also hard, challenging, exciting, because new developments were being made constantly.

His old hobbies were what had gotten him into the Nerd Herd. And now that he was there, he didn't want to have wasted so long at a retail store, so it felt like he needed to embrace where he was and move forward within it. That was the internal drive nudging and nudging for him to apply to management. Old Chuck never would have thought he'd be trying for an assistant manager position at a big-box chain but this was where he was, and his old hobbies could only carry him so far without the right resources, which he didn't have.

"But there's an open position in management," he said, changing tracks and looking up at Daniela with a slightly crooked smile. He could apply, and maybe he could get the job. "But do I really want to stay at the Buy More?"

Daniela was surprised there was so much inner turmoil and doubt over a question of where he wanted to be or what he wanted to be doing with his life. She'd never been in a position where she wasn't sure. When she wanted to study political science and journalism, she had chosen to do both. When she wanted to learn Arabic for her future job, but there was an excellent scholarship to study in China, she began both languages. If Daniela wasn't sure, her life philosophy was to grab the bull by both horns – _both,_ the pluralization, being the operative word – and scream at the bull to bring it on.

"Hey, I'm – I'm sorry," Chuck apologized, physically shaking it off and giving her a shrug as if they'd only been discussing something trivial. Daniela wasn't quite ready for them to move on. That was a big topic – if he would just give her a minute, she could find something to say. "This isn't your problem."

"No," she agreed. They may not actually be partners, but the hope was that one day they would be. "It's your problem. But that doesn't mean we can't talk about it. It's important, and it's difficult."

Her compassion made him feel kind of tingly inside. It wasn't often anyone was prepared to just listen and discuss. That was probably his own fault, really, because Ellie, Morgan, and Devon were all good listeners and all very happy to help him if Chuck ever said he needed to talk. Especially Ellie - she would love to see him quit the Buy More and do something, _anything_ , to move forward. He never did ask her to listen to him, though, because he never felt prepared to be honestly introspective and was afraid of what he might learn about himself or his future if he tried. Now was not the time to find out.

"Uh…" _Education, work…_ He thought of the other core piece to his life and started to share about his family. It wasn't a smooth change of topic and Daniela saw it coming before she knew what was going to come next. "I have an older sister, we have an apartment, and her boyfriend's moved in, I think they're the real deal. Names, and that, but… it's more than that, the connection they have, it's… ah." Chuck sighed longingly while thinking of Ellie's relationship. That kind of trusting and easygoing partnership made his heart flutter. "What does your family look like?"

If Chuck didn't want to talk about it, that was his call. "Just me. Just me…" she said, thinking about Joanna in Harlem and her other friends that may have become family if she stayed anywhere long enough. "I had a little brother, but he died in a car accident with our mom when I was sixteen. The foster system took care of me until I moved to college."

Her soulmate looked at her with sympathy. She could tolerate sympathy. "No father, no… aunts, or uncles?"

She shook her head. "Dad split a long time ago, good riddance," she remarked, moving on before he asked. "Mom was an only child. You?"

Chuck coughed. For some reason, he hadn't expected the question, and it still hurt to talk about his father. "My dad, uh, he… left. So did Mom, when I was little, but Dad stayed until Ellie and I could more or less make it on our own."

Daniela figured for herself that Ellie was his sister. "I'm so sorry," she said, given the token condolences.

"No, don't be! It's okay!" Chuck smiled brightly. She was smart enough to see that it was a little bit forced. "Morgan's family, too, and Devon – that's Ellie's boyfriend, oh, but I call him Captain Awesome." There, that was funny, and Ella had already established that she liked funny.

"Captain Awesome?" She repeated, lifting her brows skeptically.

"Because he's so awesome!" Chuck explained, leaning back. "I think it's his favorite word. Everything he does is literally awesome. Mountain biking, rock climbing." Chuck only mentioned a couple of things, but the list went on. "Heart surgery," he tacked on, with an afterthought of, "Flossing."

He was smiling again, that really handsome and bright one that wasn't super huge but really reached his eyes at the same time. Daniela wanted him to know how good he looked when he smiled like that. She liked it when he was happy. "You have a very beautiful smile," she complimented sweetly.

Her sudden comment made him smile a little bit wider. Really? She really liked his smile? He blushed warmly and looked down self-consciously, then laughed when he realized what he was impulsively doing – hiding the smile she liked. He looked up again, and she was grinning, leaning in over the table.

"Uh, thank you. Thanks. I love yours," he reciprocated truthfully, rubbing his elbow.

She wasn't usually big on making a lot of physical contact, but Daniela lifted her hand from her lap and put it on the table, to the side of the appetizers and their plates. Chuck looked at it with a second of confusion before he realized what she was offering and eagerly put his hand gingerly on top of hers. He was not ashamed of being a physically affectionate person. Her hand felt small in his. Chuck smiled at their hands together and rested his thumb against her hand in the soft space between her knuckles.

"What's next on the list?" He asked when he looked up, his eyes and smile bright.

Daniela had no specific list of questions, but there was still so much she wanted to learn. "Hm… quid pro quo?" She suggested. It sounded a lot more mature than just proposing they play 20 Questions.

"Clarice," Chuck quipped as soon as she ended her sentence, making her smirk. He smiled at her with teeth and a giggle when he saw that she caught the reference.

* * *

The rest of their dinner was uneventful, but incredible, and somehow the oxymoron completely made sense. They held hands until their food arrived and went back and forth, taking turns asking questions and sharing responses. Whenever an anecdote or a follow-up question took them astray, they just let it happen, eagerly learning the other's experiences and quirks and preferences through tangents. Their food was gone, and before Chuck even looked at his watch again, they'd been together for almost two hours.

Chuck offered to drive Daniela back to her hotel when she mentioned that she had to call a taxi, and she accepted. He tried not to feel embarrassed by the car he drove, and Ella just laughed a little and called the Nerd Herd logo cute. She kept her legs and arms close to herself in the car and was a model passenger, and she didn't seem the least bit bothered by his driving or by that he would know where she slept.

With Chuck driving, the route back actually took less time than it had to get to the restaurant. Daniela chalked it up to either traffic or city familiarity, since she learned that Chuck had lived in Los Angeles with Ellie since leaving Stanford in Palo Alto. In turn, she had revealed that her youth was spent moving between cities in the east, and that her adulthood included a lot of traveling, including many trips overseas. She felt bad for leaving out the details of where those trips were and what for, but it was a conversation for another time.

The parking lot was scantly lit with streetlights and the glow from the hotel's faint walkway lighting. The hotel doors opened to the outside, which she never liked, but the price won out over comfort. "This is it," she said, pointing to the corner of the building. "Can you take a left?"

Chuck turned where she wanted and crept the car slowly down the side of the building. "Which number are you?" He asked, scanning the doors, and then his brain caught up with his mouth again. "Wait, sorry, no, I don't need to know that."

"Here is fine," she said, amused by his backtrack. Chuck pulled the Nerd Herder into one of many empty parking spots.

His writer looked just as pretty in the tight and dim confines of his company car as she did when they were sitting together in that glowing restaurant. He resisted the urge to brush her hair behind her ear while she bent her head to check she had her hotel key card and wrangled up the courage to be the one asking her out this time. Women could totally ask guys out on dates, it's the twenty-first century, but Chuck wanted to show he was definitely as interested as she was.

"Listen, I had a really good time tonight," he told her, glad that she couldn't see the pink blush in his face as he touched the back of his neck. Daniela saw his hand move up behind his head and noted that she had already found one of his tics. "With you," he added to be plenty clear. "And I'd really like to do it again, if that's okay."

She nodded. The lower lighting and shadows of the car made his face seem softer and his shyness was cute. "I had a really good time, too, and I'd like that."

"I – I get off at five tomorrow," he shared, pleased.

Daniela saw an opportunity to screw with him and didn't even try not to take it. "Well that's really presumptuous," she noted, making sure that her voice sounded just a tiny bit offended. "What if I wanted dinner first?"

"Oh, God, wait, no, I-" He stopped when he heard her giggling and saw her eyes glinting at him mischievously. "Ugh," he groaned eloquently.

"Sorry," she offered, not really sorry at all. "That conference I came for starts at eight. Why don't we do a less fancy dinner at six and wing it if there's extra time?" She suggested, thinking about the other dress she had bought, the one for the conference. It was more professional, and it looked damn good. She'd like to show it off for someone whose opinion she actually cared about.

"Yeah," Chuck said, rubbing his hand over his face and willing his natural color back. "Yeah, that sounds good." He gave her a smile and rested his left hand on the steering wheel. "Do you want me to pick you up? Because I can give you a ride, I mean, if you want."

"Ooh, another ride in the Nerd-mobile," she gently teased. "I look forward to it."

"Six?" Chuck confirmed, smiling at her jibe.

"Six," she repeated. Right then, she really thought that a kiss might be pretty awesome. She might have asked permission, except Chuck didn't seem like he was that forward, so she decided on a more modest goodbye. She leaned across the center console and pressed her lips to his cheek quickly.

Chuck grinned, feeling like a lovesick puppy. He did well enough to earn a kiss. That was going to keep him in a good mood and carry him to their next date – which was less than twenty-four hours away. This night had gone better than he had hoped.

Since she did it to him, he leaned across the car the same as she had done and kissed her rosy cheek. Daniela smiled at him when he pulled back, glad to know she made a good choice, and opened up the car door to get out, carrying her phone and wallet in one hand and her very mildly-scented flowers in the other.

She turned around back to the car with her hand on top of the door and bent down (at her knees!) to give him a last look. "Bye, Chuck," she said with a little smirk, feeling like she was pulling off something great.

He was wearing the same delighted and flattered smile that he had been for most of the night. Chuck's eyes landed on her with a fondness Daniela wouldn't have expected to deserve after only one date, but it made her body tingle to know that this man felt such nice things about her already.

"Bye, Ella," he replied happily.

Daniela smiled. After hearing it from his mouth a few times, she easily preferred Ella to Dani. She definitely liked it. The silent approval made Chuck's smile grow a little more until he seemed to radiate positivity. She shut the door after herself and made her way across the aisle of the parking lot to the concrete sidewalk in front of her hotel door. Chuck sat in his car and watched until she was safely inside her room, then shifted the car into gear and pulled away to go home.


	4. Chapter Four

Computer? More like corpse. Chuck saved as many of the smashed pieces as he could, but even with most of them in a zip-lock bag and cluttered together, there was no way this computer would survive. But, if video games taught him anything, sometimes corpses came back as zombies, and even a zombie computer would be better than no computer at all.

His shift didn't start until nine, but Chuck wanted to get there a little bit early and see about fixing his own technical problem. He was running a little late – he lost track of time, thinking dazedly about his date with Daniela in the shower – and had to hurry through breakfast, scarfing down a mix of Captain Crunch and Cheerios (they didn't have enough of either for a full unmixed bowl).

Ellie's footsteps came from her bedroom swiftly, clicking down the hall from her and Devon's bedroom. He knew they were hers because her shoes sounded different than either of the men's. She was already dressed in her second pair of blue scrubs, with her long hair left down but pinned so her bangs were to the side.

"You're home!" Ellie exclaimed, stopping short beside the kitchen. Chuck smiled with his mouth closed while he chewed. Ellie burst back to motion, hurrying into the kitchen with her arms out until her hands landed on his upper arms. "When did you get home?"

"I came in a little before eleven," he answered. Ellie was usually awake until close to midnight. "You didn't hear me?" And besides, where else would he have gone, if not home?

Ellie waved her hand dismissively in a big gesture. "I was probably asleep already, I meant to stay up and ask, how did it go?"

Chuck smiled, giving in and not making her wait. It was really nice to finally say that something went well for him, and when he started to smile, Ellie squealed, lifting her hands up in front of her mouth.

"It went great, El," he said, keeping his cereal bowl held up. If he put it down then he was just going to keep talking about Ella, and then he'd be late to work. "It really did, I… _she_ was great," he said, giving Ellie another, more secretive smile. It felt like a mystery had been solved; his soulmate was a wonderful person he was quickly enamored with. "We're going out for dinner again today."

"I'm so happy for you!" Ellie twisted side to side by her waist, unable to contain her excitement. "I _knew_ you'd have an amazing time." She threw her arms out again and gave him a quick hug, completely ignoring the breakfast she almost spilled.

* * *

A couple of hours after work started, Chuck was called back to the loading dock by Lester. Despite having the worst possible personality for a customer service job, the Canadian was actually really good with fixing things that were broken. Getting him to work on a customer's order was all but impossible, but Chuck covered for his bad attitude enough that Lester was willing to take a look at his busted device.

Lester had brought his computer and its pieces to the dock and set them near Chuck's parking spot. When Chuck arrived and crouched down to see, he shook his head gravely. "Nah, I've been through it. This hard drive was… _murdered._ "

Chuck sighed. Fantastic, now he and his soulmate had something new in common. Maybe Daniela could afford to spring for new devices and components, but Chuck was going to have to wait to get a new hard drive, much less a fully new computer. He had really hoped that his files, at the very least, would have been recoverable.

Wherever Lester was, Jeff was never far behind. The two men were best friends sometimes, and other days Lester couldn't stand the much older and much whiter man. Chuck tried to be nice to them both, but quite frankly, Lester may have an attitude but there was something broken in Jeff's head.

"What if you were the unwitting target of a ninja vendetta and he returns tonight to strangle you with his nunchucks?" Jeff hypothesized from out of nowhere, earning a look of contemplation from Lester and a distressed stare from Chuck. He was never sure how seriously to take Jeff.

"… That's super, Jeff," Chuck sarcastically answered, finally realizing that he was dead serious. "Thanks for thinking outside the box on that one. And here I thought I couldn't get any more freaked out." It turned out that he was wrong about Daniela's little kiss carrying him on cloud nine through the day. It wasn't even lunch yet and he was already stressed from his colleague's disturbingly violent theories and the reminder of a freaking _ninja_ breaking into his home.

The older man stared at him, even when Chuck diverted his attention to his computer. There was nothing else for it, he supposed, except to donate it to the Cage to be scrapped into whatever electronic parts might work for something else. He looked up again to ask Lester if that was every piece, and Jeff winked at him.

Chuck stared back, crossing his arms defensively. Jeff winked again, this time with the other eye.

It probably meant nothing, but suddenly Chuck felt a lot less secure with that guy knowing his home address. "I'm gonna go buy some new locks next door at Large Mart." Chuck decided, bending down at the edge of the dock and hopping down onto the asphalt.

* * *

If Big Mike knew that Chuck were voluntarily shopping at Large Mart, he might actually combust on the spot. Buy More and Large Mart had a long-term rivalry going that once in a while manifested with pranks against the employees of the other establishment. They had never been very serious, but they could be troublesome, and the pranks came from places of derision, not playful competition.

Like Buy More, Large Mart was a big-box retail store; unlike Buy More, they didn't specialize in electronics. Their store was thus larger and arranged more like a storage warehouse similar to Sam's Club to store their products. The hard floor and harsher colors made Chuck especially conscious of his betrayal, but the facts were the facts: Large Mart sold a greater selection of higher-quality locks.

A long main aisle on the right side of the store took him past rows of merchandise for home improvement, then to hardware. His footsteps were his only company and Chuck fixed his tie absentmindedly, wondering why the store was so empty when there were so many cars outside. At the very least, he knew there was usually music playing on the speakers, but he could hear nothing except a squeaky cart somewhere else in the store.

After passing by an aisle with hand saws, drills, and other construction equipment, Chuck spotted another man in the next hardware aisle with very distinctive red hair. It was obviously bleached and dyed, because the ginger coloring hadn't fully masked the blond left behind. "Oh, thank God," Chuck said, comforted. Large stores with power tools were very uncomfortable in silence and solitude. "Excuse me, sir, do you know where they sell the-"

The man turned to look at him while Chuck was speaking and Chuck stopped when he saw the man's chilling dark brown eyes. His head throbbed and he barely had the time to think _not this again_ before he was seeing flashes of foreign images; _pie eye army card trade fire stick wire fire bomb army pie apple building pie._

When he was able to think and see clearly again, Chuck jerked his eyes up from where they had at some point settled on the Serbian's black leather jacket (and how did he know the man was Serbian?). The Serbian was looking at him with annoyance, expecting him to finish his question.

"What do you want?" The Serbian asked roughly in a gravelly voice with a heavy eastern accent.

"Um," Chuck said in the most intelligent stammer that he could. He absolutely could not say that he had seen and knew the man's name was Vuc and he was born in Belgrade. "Uh, um, no, no, sorry, nothing, nothing, nothing at all." Chuck smiled awkwardly and put a hand over his tie, subtly feeling his chest and confirming that his heart was racing. He definitely shouldn't say, either, that the man used to be in the Serbian military and was an explosives expert-slash-mercenary. "I was just – oh, wow, look at that!" He pointed at a handsaw down the aisle and refused to look back at the Serbian, just walking past slowly with his eyes locked ahead.

 _Just act natural,_ Chuck told himself firmly, because whether or not he was going insane, under no circumstances should he turn back around and ask if the Serbian was a fan of General Stanfield, since he had been connected to the discovery of flight plans and hotel blueprints. Chuck stopped about halfway down the aisle and turned his head very slowly to look over his shoulder until he could see black leather in his periphery. He let his shoulders relax just a bit as he kept walking and moved further away.

While the Nerd Herder dragged his feet forwards, he questioned the last thirty-six hours with increasingly intense panic. Before, he thought he had just been extremely hungover and feeling the effects of too much spiked punch combined with too little sleep. Now he didn't know what to think. It had been too long for it to be alcohol and he was beginning to think that the visions and clips flashing through his brain were more significant than fevered hallucinations.

That building he kept seeing – the one he saw exploding – it was still standing. He recognized it, he saw it all the time. It was one of the most well-known buildings in Los Angeles since before Chuck had even been born. When he remembered the blueprints he saw in the shower the day before, he saw the unique design of the hotel on the paper.

The sound of heavier steps echoing Chuck's footfalls on the concrete floor made him stop and swallow. The footsteps behind him stopped. Chuck stared at the massive, floor-to-thirty-foot-ceiling shelving unit at the end of the row lining the store's far wall and listened to heavy metallic clinking behind him. There was a noise like a metal spring being pulled back, and then a sharp click as something moved into place and was locked taut.

He knew he was going to regret looking but he had to know. The Serbian was much closer to Chuck than he had been standing before and was holding up a black and green nail gun taken from the display shelf. A box of nails which were stored on the shelf below the guns was open. There was really no call for loading up any kind of gun, nail gun included, in a store, in Chuck's opinion. Unarmed ninjas were one thing, and to be clear, Chuck had never tried to fight, just to ask respectfully for his belongings. Armed Serbian mercenaries were very different. Very, _very_ different.

It was time to run, he decided. Chuck was not a fan of running but he was even less of a fan of being murdered with a nail gun, so it was a choice between two evils.

As soon as the Serb started to move again, Chuck sprinted for the end of the aisle. They weren't wide enough for him to double back and trust himself to be fast enough – or graceful enough – to get past the mercenary unharmed. Chuck didn't really know for sure what a mercenary did but he knew they were not to be messed with. He reached the end of the aisle as a beeping sound started and the loud hum of mechanics echoed down the long aisles. A cargo forklift carrying boxes of products to be shelved cut him off, and the person driving didn't even seem to notice.

He put his back to the forklift to keep track of the Serbian, who was advancing while swinging the offensively brightly-colored nail gun at his side. Vuc was looking at him like he was a boring but necessary problem to solve, carrying the weapon like Chuck carried his little screwdriver for _electronic_ problems.

As soon as the forklift was past, Chuck completely ignored the sign on the side staying to not approach and squeezed out of the aisle between a shelf corner and the back of the machine, breaking into a dead sprint as fast as his legs could go. That turned out to be faster than he expected.

Chuck bolted to the front of the store. He'd get the subpar locks at Buy More if he had to, but he was not going back the way he came. Close to the front registers, he nearly ran over a shorter black woman in a red Large Mart shirt who was walking around the corner and carrying a staff radio.

"Oh my God," Chuck said, grabbing onto her shoulders so she didn't fall. "Thank God, listen, there's a guy here, he's trying to do – something, I don't know!" Chuck panted and looked over his shoulder for the mercenary in case he was still following. He turned his head back to the woman who was shrugging herself out from under his hands and moving around him warily. "You have to call the cops," he urged, palms itching to grab her and pull her away from the direction of danger. "Security, the guy at the front who's checking receipts-"

"Uh, what kind of guy?" She asked, still giving Chuck an uncomfortable and suspicious look.

"Scary, kind of a Terminator vibe, stubble, red hair!" Chuck listed, because obviously he couldn't just say the man's name and have it good, so what even was the point of those terrifying and clearly life-threatening flashes?

She looked over his shoulder and back to Chuck's face. "Black leather jacket?" She finished for him, looking less unnerved and more irritated.

"Yes!" Chuck nodded, his brain only very slowly connecting dots to realize she saw the mercenary behind him. "Yes!"

"Like that guy?" The associate asked next, pointing.

Chuck turned around and almost fainted. The Serbian was talking quietly and politely with a cashier while passing over some cash to pay for the nail gun and a box of nails, which was still closed. Chuck looked between the cash registers and the associate he ran into, his mouth moving and no sound coming out as he realized everything was wrong _._

The store wasn't empty, it was busy. There was music over the PA system, but he couldn't hear all of it because people were talking, merchandise was being moved by employees, and rickety carts were being rolled over the sales floor. Cash registers beeped and chimed. The music was paused so that a man's voice could make an announcement. The store was nothing like it had been only two minutes ago, and there was no possible way it could have suddenly become busy and active. Except it had.

The woman left Chuck standing there to go finish whatever she had been in the process of doing. The techie looked around, flustered and confused with his hands shaking. He really had thought he was in danger, but was the whole thing a hallucination? Why had he seen the Serbian but no one else? Was his brain making that up, too? Was the man actually from Belgrade or was he just as American as Chuck?

What about the explosives he saw, and the bombs going off and destroying buildings, including the prolific LA hotel? What about the connection to the general, to the conference his own soulmate was planning to attend? Why was he seeing false passports in his mind and losing control over what he saw in reality?

Chuck couldn't remember being more afraid or confused in his life. Not only did he just somehow experience what felt like a threat to his life, he didn't think he could fully trust his own brain anymore.

* * *

In her hotel about ten minutes away from Large Mart and Buy More, Daniela stepped out of her shower with her body wrapped in one white towel and her hair wrapped in a second. She went out of the bathroom to the cooler air in the bedroom, made sure the window was covered by the curtains, and dressed by her bed into the leggings she wore on her first night in and the tank top she insisted on keeping. There was no point in getting her second new dress wrinkled before her date and conference event.

She reflected on the last two days and was in awe at how much had changed. She was back in her country, and it was a relief. She wasn't uber patriotic, although she did appreciate her nation's strengths. Although she was fully capable of thriving in other cultures and countries, her last trip had been far from a vacation. It was good to be surrounded by her native language with easy access to food and amenities.

And yet, it wasn't her padded bed, long shower, or large dinner that had made her feel so happy and accomplished. It was her personal life. Charles – Chuck, she corrected herself, she would call him what he liked to be called – was better than she had hoped for. Soulmates didn't work out a lot more often than the media led people to believe, and it was for some reason shameful to admit if you weren't in a positive relationship with your own. Chuck was kind, funny, friendly, handsome, and smart. Anyone who knew Daniela even a little bit knew that she liked her men smart.

She picked up her phone from the bedside table and checked the time. Dani liked to sleep but wasn't the type to sleep in. She would have been up and moving hours earlier if she still had her laptop, but without her computer, it was a lot harder to work. She wasn't going to draft an article by hand and then have to type it up later, so she let it go. Her computer should be fixed in a day or two, anyway.

Chuck exchanged numbers with her before they left the restaurant. Daniela had entered herself as her full name in his contacts, but it seemed he had left his number labeled just with his moniker. She had a lot of contacts in her phone because of her job, so she needed a little more information than that. She quickly added his last name into the profile before saving and opening a new text.

Flirting over text was difficult. Daniela didn't even know what to say.

She stared at her phone for a few minutes while her towel slowly began to lose form on her head and slouch. She was seeing Chuck again – there was no real need to communicate when they'd already made plans. Except, despite the hours that had passed and that she had washed her face twice since, she swore her cheek was still tingling where his lips had kissed.

The journalist decided to abandon the notion of flirting and instead just sent him a hello. If she wasn't certain she could pull off the right tone over pure words, it was better not to try. She doubted he knew her well enough to guess her mood by her syntax.

**To: Chuck Bartowski**

**How was your morning? I had a great time with you and I'm looking forward to dinner. Take care and drive safely.**

She pressed send and put her phone down, then looked around her room. There were no plans for the next several hours, it was past time for the hotel's continental breakfast, and she was hungry. It was Los Angeles; there had to be a place where she could order a massive American breakfast at lunchtime.

* * *

Behind the safety of the Nerd Herd counter, Chuck leaned onto the circular tabletop with his face down to his crossed arms. What was the point of looking up when for all he knew, he was going to see absolutely no one? Maybe next time he opened his eyes he wouldn't be in the Buy More. Maybe he would be in the cretaceous period looking at a dinosaur. Maybe he wouldn't be anywhere at all and he'd just be standing in some completely black abyss with no floor.

"I'm losing my mind," he grumbled as he went through scenarios of all the things he might see that he absolutely should not believe. His phone vibrated in his back pocket, but he wasn't totally sure that was real so what was even the point in checking it. "I'm losing my mind, I'm losing my mind."

The service bell rang, making him groan. It was very annoying when it was so close to his head, and besides, wasn't it obvious he was busy having a mental breakdown?

Chuck reached for the bell and put his hand down on top of the hand already over it. "Morgan, not now," he said in the same tone as his mantra, preparing to return to his quiet repetition.

It took him a second, but he felt the hand he was holding and loosened his grip. He patted it with his fingers. That hand was smaller and much softer than Morgan's. Ergo, not Morgan – ergo, someone else, someone he was probably embarrassing himself in front of, and he'd rather go home instead of to a mental hospital. And he'd really like to push that back far enough to see Daniela again before he had to lay the burden of his rapidly declining mental stability on her.

He stood up straight when he came to this conclusion. Sarah was standing in front of him in a peach-colored shirt with amusement on her face, which was much better than the alternative. Chuck moved his hand quickly and grabbed the miniature screwdriver from his pocket.

"Hi!" He said, giving her an awkward smile and hoping his eyes clearly shared his apology. "Hi, uh, phone trouble again?"

"Uh, yeah," Sarah said, looking down in front of her and slowly pulling her hand off of the counter. "I'm not sure I'm able to receive calls, because…" She looked back up at him while she trailed off and grazed her teeth attractively over her bottom lip. Her mouth shone with some shimmery lip gloss. "I never got one from you," she finished.

Behind Chuck, Morgan started to laugh. "Oh, oh, oh, man," he cheered. Sarah looked over Chuck's shoulder and Chuck looked behind him, giving Morgan an embarrassed and stern glare. Morgan knew fully well that his response was not convincing adult behavior. Morgan coughed and distracted himself quickly by fiddling with the paper tray on a printer.

Chuck looked back at Sarah, who had a subtle blush on her cheeks. "I'm sorry I left so quickly yesterday," she said earnestly, "I had an appointment with a realtor. I just moved here."

"Welcome!" Chuck said with a bright smile, curious what it was about him that was apparently so attractive to new Burbank residents.

"Thanks," she said, smiling a little less tentatively. "And, uh, I don't really know anyone here. I was wondering if you would show me around. That is… if you're free." Sarah looked really sweet and a little shy.

"That's," he started, and awkwardly restarted. He couldn't remember turning a date down before. This was new. "I'm flattered, uh, Sarah, but, uh, I'm not super available right now," he admitted, putting his screwdriver away and crossing his arms in a little hug for himself.

It felt like he was living in backwards world. Serbian mercenaries were shopping in the Large Mart, he was having eerie hallucinations, and now he was turning down a date with someone like Sarah. Not only was he turning down Sarah, he was doing so because he was already going on dates with another very lovely lady. There were a lot of soulmate pairs that weren't romantic at all, but Daniela had seemed to enjoy his company and she was the one who initiated the face-kissing stage of their relationship, so if it was possible they were going to be together, Chuck wanted to see where he might go with his soulmate before trying to date another woman.

"Oh," Sarah said, looking surprised and a little bit disappointed. Chuck felt bad for the latter and decided he was probably glad not to be the one who usually turned down dates. "Oh, I just – I'm sorry," she apologized, looking a little mortified. "I thought-"

"That I was single?" Chuck filled in for her when she stopped midsentence. He gave her a playful smile to show there was no harm done. "No, it's fair, most people think the same thing."

Sarah didn't seem super comforted. "I'm so sorry," she repeated. "And thanks again, for fixing my phone." She briefly held up her Intellicell before she left in a hurry. Chuck really felt bad and hoped that he hadn't accidentally embarrassed her any worse. That really wasn't what he'd been going for. She seemed very nice.

Chuck watched her until she left the automatic double-doors of the store and scratched the back of his head, tangling his fingers in his short hair momentarily. It was definitely one of the weirder days he'd ever had.

Now that he wasn't hiding on the desk anymore, he took his phone out of his pants pocket and checked the notification. He had a new text message from Daniela Harris. He smiled to himself while opening it and read it three times before he even thought about sending a reply. It felt very validating to know he wasn't the only one looking forward to seeing each other again.

Losing his mind was a definite concern, but it could wait until after dinner.

* * *

Dinner came quickly for both Daniela and Chuck, to their delight. Chuck picked her up at her hotel with another bouquet of flowers, this time light pink roses which the florist said were good signs of affection without being over the top or too on-the-nose. The smile on her face when she took them and the way she held them carefully in her lap during the drive let him know that he definitely made a good choice.

Daniela prepared for the conference before Chuck picked her up, feeling a sense of excitement she hadn't felt in a long time. She was eager to show off her second dress for Chuck. It was a slimming black dress that ran to her knees which she paired with tights and flats instead of the bare legs and sandals of the night before, and the dress had a strip of different, heathered grey fabric around the waist which gave it the style of a cinched belt. The moment he first looked away from her face and at the dress on her body, his face very clearly gave away that he liked how it looked. The writer had felt her confidence double in that instant.

Looking at his soulmate had made Chuck feel underdressed, but he laughed it off with a compliment about how she looked amazing and straightened the collar of his shirt. Ellie said nothing about wearing work clothes on a _second_ date, but he had still taken an extra shirt with him in his car and changed into it before picking her up. He was really glad for that foresight, especially since Daniela apologized when she picked up on his momentary discomfort and he hurried to reassure her that he understood she had her business event as well.

Because she had picked Centanni for their first date, Chuck selected a Mexican restaurant for their second. Mexican and Italian used very different combinations, but the two restaurants had a lot of ingredient overlap and a similar atmosphere. The Mexican restaurant was more casual, but Chuck knew for a fact that their food was every bit as good, even though it did come out a little faster and they didn't really need appetizers.

The woman was totally at ease for the whole meal. Daniela usually only felt so comfortable around people whom she had years of rapport with and so she reveled in the feeling of familiarity she shared with her soulmate. They spent the first thirty minutes talking about anything they could think of, playing some more back-and-forth personal trivia, and munching on the complimentary corn chips. The last twenty were a little quieter because they were both eating, but the quiet didn't feel like it needed to be filled. It just was. They were existing together, and it was really, really good for Daniela, who was used to putting forth a lot of effort to fill silences.

After both had tucked away pretty large plates, Chuck leaned back in his chair and sipped on his soda. "So was this as good as last night?" He asked her opinion, biting his lip hopefully and putting his glass down.

"Oh, that's a hard question," she deflected, knowing exactly what he meant – was the company still good – and pretending to evaluate the restaurants. Of course she had still enjoyed his company. "The cheese dip was some of the best I've ever tasted, so they've got that going for them, and my shrimp was cooked perfectly."

Chuck smiled a little at her, starting off a bit crooked before he realized that she had quite deliberately answered wrong. Knowing she thought it was so obvious was encouraging. Chuck felt like he hadn't had to try very hard and the notion that he could attract and entertain a successful and beautiful woman just by being himself was a really good boost to the self-esteem. He lifted his shoulders a little and took out his wallet to pay the bill since she had insisted on covering it the night before.

Daniela considered paying for her half but pushed that urge down. This wasn't a professional encounter, and personal relationships weren't measured by debt. She put some money down for the tip and slowly finished her water while they waited patiently for someone to come collect Chuck's card and the ticket.

Chuck smiled across the table at her. He just couldn't seem to stop. There was finally something going right in his life and it was something so important and precious to boot. He learned a little more about her every minute and he was so glad that she was willing to let him. She kept correcting herself, adding on or clarifying when she was brief or vague, so he knew that she wasn't a particularly open person by habit, but she was trying to be. That meant everything.

The waiter took the card and left the table to ring them up and pay.

Daniela looked after the waiter as he went for a few seconds, chewing on the inside of her cheek. This was supposed to be the end of the date, but she just… she wasn't ready for it to be over. She had her recording pen clipped to her neckline and her phone and wallet inside her jacket pockets, but despite her preparedness to work, she wasn't quite ready to walk away from such a great companion. Romantic partnership or not, she could already tell that this thing she had with Chuck was going to be an emotional safe haven for her.

The waiter came back with the card and the receipt, took their empty plates, and left again.

Chuck looked up from putting his stuff back into his wallet and caught Ella looking at him wistfully, seeming to contemplate something in her head. He was eager to know anything she was thinking involving him. If he were a more insecure person, he probably would have asked how she liked him, even though she'd already expressed something like that not long ago when she assured him that he was a welcome presence.

"What?" He asked her while she finished her water.

The writer put her glass down and checked her phone to see the time. "Well, it's just that I have another hour, and I'd really like to see a little more of Los Angeles with you first." She stated, giving Chuck a look that was mild in expression but very focused in her eyes. Her eyes carried the meaningfulness of what she said, and Chuck grinned.

Yes, he would love to keep those incredibly expressive green eyes on him for a little while longer, please and thank you.

* * *

Daniela couldn't remember the last time she had intentionally made a date last longer. Maybe it was all the way back in sophomore year of college. Or maybe it was actually even further back, in high school. She had always been a very driven woman and while dates were fun, she had schedules to keep and other things to do. Chuck was special.

It wasn't just that he was her soulmate, although that was part of why she was so willing to be up front and sociable. Chuck was different from other boys she had been on dates with, even though it sounded awfully cliché. Dani hated clichés, but she would make an exception for this one. Her entire career was founded on valuing the truth, so the fact would have to be more important than her opinion of the cliché-ness.

She checked her phone while they strolled. It was already dark out, but it was never really _that_ dark in a big city, which was part of why she liked them so much. Burbank was kept aglow with building signs, traffic and streetlights, and the lights from windows of residential and commercial facilities. She just needed to keep an eye on the time to make sure she could get where she needed to be, no matter how much she wanted to just push it off.

They had plenty of time for some more walking, and Daniela put the hand with her phone and wallet back down. Chuck kept his hands in his pockets and kind of felt like he should offer to use those pockets to carry her things, but wasn't sure if it was acceptable for him to ask her to hand over her wallet. That might be a little weird, and they'd only known each other for two days, or actually less. Her shoulders were close to his and he was a little hopeful maybe their arms would bump or they'd end up holding hands.

"What about, uh, movies?" He asked, keeping up their back-and-forth from the restaurant. If yesterday's date had been the general getting-to-know-you for a sense of identity, then today's was learning the trivia and details. It was fun, and Chuck had a good memory when it came to learning his friends' likes and wants.

"I haven't seen any that've come out recently," Daniela warned, thinking of all the films that would have come out while she was overseas. She didn't even see that many when she was in the country. "And I'm not much of a movie person," she added, "I prefer TV series."

"Oh my God, my heart is breaking," Chuck commented, putting his hand over his chest and laughing. Ella turned her face away from him, but not before he saw her smile in the slightly orange-tinted light from a streetlamp. " _Harry Potter?"_ He asked. The fifth movie had been all the rage when it came out a few months ago. " _Spider-Man_? _Pirates of the Caribbean_? _Ratatouille_?"

The traveler lifted her shoulders, her mouth open as she tried to think of a movie. She gave up and let her arms drop, chuckling to herself and reaching up to fix a piece of hair that had fallen into her face. "And just like that, I've become a huge disappointment." She joked.

"Oh, totally," Chuck quickly agreed, "Worst date ever." He gave her another teasing look before his face lit up. Daniela felt another wave of affection – he looked so sweet and excited. "Oh, that's a – that's a good one! What's the worst date you've ever been on?"

"Ugh," she remarked right out of the gates. "That's got to be the blind date who turned out to work for NYPD, and-"

"You don't like cops?" Chuck interrupted, surprised.

"I don't mind cops," Daniela corrected patiently. Some cops were corrupt and those she detested – abusing their power over innocents made her skin crawl. She had no problem with the good ones. "But he wouldn't shut up about his shop talk. Like, I get it, you arrest felons, now eat your food." Chuck made a face. He would lose his appetite if his partner kept talking about murder and arson. "Oh, but it got worse," Daniela quickly continued, seeing his face, and Chuck gave her an astounded expression. "He got really dodgy and left early, and ten minutes later I saw him still outside the restaurant, fighting with _another_ detective, and they ended up pepper spraying each other in the face!"

Chuck threw his head back to laugh. He just pictured two fully grown men in blue uniforms screaming in pain while continuing to aim pepper spray at each other. "Do you have a picture?"

Daniela feigned irritation. It had been a really terrible blind date, but at least she'd gotten a good story out of it. A few years later on it was providing good fodder for her new relationship. "Alright then, since it's so funny, what's _your_ worst date experience?"

Chuck had to think about it. Hopefully she wouldn't realize he'd been pathetically un-dateable since college. They stepped out onto a pedestrian bridge which arched across a highway. Parts of the city were designed almost in overlapping layers to allow traffic and transit while making the most of the space for buildings and people.

"Eleventh grade," he said, turning his head to look back at her. Daniela raised her eyebrows and he was prepared for a jest about why it was so long ago, so Chuck looked away to hide his smile. His soulmate's teasing was on a good level with his own. Police cars were racing with their sirens on towards the overpass. "There was a girl in my class I-"

 _Sequence pie lines building person people crowd stage army hotel numbers apple pie map general stage speech building fire._ _Everything was on fire and the entire building was collapsing._

Daniela stopped walking when she realized Chuck had, too. He was standing awkwardly like he had quit mid-step, just like he'd stopped talking midsentence. She turned and moved in front of him to see his face. Chuck was staring over the side of the bridge and to the highway below as a police brigade passed with their lights and sirens on, with a really odd look on his face that she couldn't quite place, somewhere between fear and confusion.

"Chuck," she said loudly, putting her hand on his shoulder firmly. He didn't look at her until after the police cars were underneath them and out of sight. Daniela said his name again – he still looked stunned and bewildered. "Chuck, can you hear me?"

One second they were talking and the next he was seeing explosions. Chuck swallowed and clenched his fists in his pockets. Daniela was looking at him like something very wrong had happened and he worried he said something out loud.

"Yes, I, uh, yeah, I can hear you," he responded to her, glancing over her shoulder. Daniela looked again, but the traffic was normal since the brigade had passed. She put her eyes back on him and tried to judge the size of his pupils against his irises. There wasn't enough light to clearly see the difference. "What's up?" He asked, playing it off. "What – did I zone out?" How long had she been talking to him?

"Yeah, you did," the journalist slowly responded, moving her hand off of his shoulder. She'd never seen something like that before, but it happened right as he saw the police lights. "Chuck, do you have any history of seizures or epilepsy?" A small seizure could have explained the unresponsiveness.

"What?" He asked, realizing what she said and what she meant right after. Chuck shook his head. "No, I – not that I know of, at least, I'm pretty sure I would know that by now." He gestured to his head with a crooked smile that just worried her even more. "Um, I, uh – what's your favorite band?"

She kept her eyes on him uncertainly. Whatever just happened didn't distress him nearly enough, but if he really had just zoned out, then she was making a fuss about nothing. Except he didn't see her when she was right in front of his face, or hear her snapping his name for a solid five seconds, and the sentence he had quit right in the middle of didn't even seem to register.

"Don't laugh," she reluctantly said, taking up a stride on his right side this time so that she was closer to the edge of the bridge. She couldn't force him to talk to her about it, but she could keep alert to see if it happened again.

"I promise, I would never," Chuck vowed, putting his arm up like a boy scout.

"Fall Out Boy's a favorite," Daniela admitted. For some reason no one ever expected her to like that musical sound. "Panic at the Disco. I also like this new band I found, Daughtry."

"Oh, you like the sort of new-age punk-rock, huh?" Chuck started trying to think of any CDs in the store he was familiar with, but although the bands' names rang bells, the best he could think of was that _Sins Not Tragedies,_ which just about everyone and their brothers had known since 2005.

"Well, what are you into?" She asked, unsure what his tone meant. He didn't sound particularly judgmental.

"I like all sorts of stuff," Chuck said noncommittally. It was hard to pick a favorite musical era or genre. "I still listen to records my dad used to play when I was little," he shared, thinking with a grin about the record player in his room. "But, you know, I hear new music all the time, the Buy More sells a ton of it and Big Mike – my boss – likes us to play it on the sound system."

"So stuff from your youth, that would be… Billy Joel?" She guessed, thinking about her favorite 1980s music. "Hall and Oates?" Teasingly, she reached out her arm and dug her elbow into his ribs. "Sinatra?"

"Ha, ha," he sarcastically laughed, rubbing his side. "Yeah, Hall and Oates, I loved them. Oasis is a good one. Huey Lewis!" He added enthusiastically. He had every record that Huey Lewis and the News had ever put out on both record and CD. He checked his watch, having an idea. "There's a, a performance place nearby I know of, actually, if we go back we can get my car. They have drinks, and live music."

Daniela didn't normally drink much to begin with, and definitely not right before attending a professional venue, but the music could be fun. She definitely wanted to see the kinds of places that her soulmate went for fun.

"Do you think it's worth going?" She asked, grudgingly being responsible instead of just agreeing like she wanted to. "We'd have to leave in time for me to get to the conference. It's at Westin Bonaventure," she added. Chuck would know the traffic better than she did so he'd know when they needed to leave to get there.

Ella might as well have turned and sucker punched him. Suddenly he couldn't breathe. That gorgeous building with the dark glass windows and the unique cylindrical shapes that he kept seeing blown up was the Westin Bonaventure Hotel, and his soulmate was going to be walking right in.

"Yeah," he said, his voice a little higher from the tightness in his throat. "Yeah, we should have a few minutes." He told himself not to flip out on her. That would be ridiculous. Whatever was happening to him wasn't real, it wasn't logical. The building was totally safe, just like the Large Mart was totally safe, and even if he wanted to tell her what was happening to his head (hah, as if he himself had any clue), where would he even start?

They turned around to go back and Daniela was just about to ask about the odd pitch of his voice when she saw a big black SUV with tinted windows. She could have sworn she had seen it in the parking lot of the restaurant, too. Her stomach tightened with nerves and she put her hand on Chuck's elbow. There was nothing to overreact about. Black SUVs were sold just about everywhere, and in a city of four million, there were bound to be quite a few.

But still, she felt like she was being watched right back when she looked at the side windows.

* * *

The venue wasn't as busy as it usually was when Chuck attended. The Tuesday night crowd was rowdy and loud, but at least there was room to move. The place served as a respectable bar during the daylight, but the basement doubled as a nightclub after hours. Chuck led Daniela to the stairs leading down with their hands loosely entwined.

Flashing lights, loud bass, and electric guitar so loud she could feel the acoustics through her flats made Daniela remember why she avoided going out to parties during school. Chuck let go of her hand when she stepped on the stairs at the same pace as him, looking around over the bobbing heads. This was not ideal, especially since she was with a man she thought might have had a seizure twenty minutes ago.

When he suggested a live performance, she had been thinking more like a jazz club, but one look at Chuck's face and she knew she was going to be there until it was time to go to her conference. His face was lit up by the red and amber strobe lights from the stage and his cheeks were rounded with a big smile. He loved his music, she gathered, and she couldn't say no to him.

Chuck sat back on the metal rail that extended down the stairs. "Raaaaail!" He called, sliding down to the bottom of the steps and hopping off before he fell. Daniela laughed at his childish joy and followed down the normal way. She was not going to get her dress dirty for the sake of sliding on a piece of metal.

Chuck waited for her at the bottom of the stairs and held his hand out. Ella's smaller hand felt right at home in his and he was finding that he really did like to hold hands with her. He pressed his thumb gently into the back of her hand and led her through the dancing audience to the back of the room, where there was a lot more personal space to be had and some miscellaneous furniture set out for guests.

He let go of her hand when he turned to sit and she smiled at him, sitting on the brown ottoman next to him and crossing her legs at her ankles. The former student felt like his entire body was buzzing with happiness. His soulmate and friend – possibly his girlfriend? – sitting beside him and a really good local band (he'd seen them before) made for an excellent night out. Although it was entirely possible that the buzzing was because of the acoustics reverberating through his feet.

She scanned the room again. From up on the stairs, she'd been able to see that there were no secondary exits, although there were some pillars. The basement was furnished for a party, which served its purpose, but it looked as though it had been meant to be something else and hadn't been completed. The pillars were being used to hang streamers and flyers advertising local concerts and bands' contact information.

She estimated about eighty, maybe more people in the large basement altogether. The sheer number in the small space made her uneasy, but she wasn't about to say that to Chuck. On the raised stage at the front of the room, three members of the band were performing as loud as they possibly could. Daniela half expected the drummer's sticks to pound right through his drums. Movement on the stairs caught her eye again. As elevated as they were, it was very easy to detect the four men entering the club, all dressed in black suits.

She looked around the club again, casing the concert a second time and looking at what people were wearing. There were sparkly, dark, and plain clothes; casual attire and sexy night-out apparel. Chuck, in his jeans and button-down, was more dressed up than a lot of the men. This was definitely not a location for black tie suits, which made the quartet on the stairs look more suspicious. Daniela thought again about the SUV that she thought she had recognized.

Chuck watched the band and kept glancing at her. Daniela didn't look like she was paying much attention to the music, so he suspected he had read her tastes wrong. She was looking around at the people with her sharp, keen eyes. He almost asked her if she ever turned off that mode of her brain. She was always looking around and studying the people near her.

Before he asked if she wanted to leave, Daniela put her hand on his knee. She had an uncomfortable feeling she couldn't talk herself into letting go of, but there was probably nothing nefarious at play and there was no need to scare her date. "They're good!" She said to him, smiling, shouting to be heard. "I can't understand the words, but I like the sound!"

Chuck leaned in closer to hear her and so that he could yell back to her. "Concerts are always better when you know the music first!" He shouted knowingly, wincing to himself. He hadn't thought about how hard it would be to talk. "I have the albums at home, we can listen to them later! Or – or some other time, not to assume-"

He backpedaled so quickly that it was easy to tell where he thought he went wrong. She flexed her fingers on his knee. "I'm okay with going home with you," she cut him off and reassured. "You know, for music."

"Good?" Chuck smiled at her and looked down at her hand on his pants. "That's good!" She felt safe with him. Good. He turned his attention back to the band, bobbing his head to the bassline. If she was happy, then he was happy.

He was already distracted again. Daniela was torn between being in awe of his ability to just relax and exasperated by his obliviousness. The men in the black suits had split up at the base of the stairs. Two of them she had lost sight of in the crowd, but she could see the other two, about five feet apart, edging through towards the back of the party, keeping close to the wall. She accidentally made eye contact with one of them and swallowed hard – he was not there to have fun.

She stood up abruptly, needing to get her eyes on the other two. She saw their dark suits moving close to the opposite wall, also heading to the back. She recognized that move. Splitting up to come in on both sides. They were trying to hem her in as far from the exit as they could.

Her body itched to flee. Four against one was a fight she couldn't win. Except then she felt Chuck take her hand again, confused where she was going, and she remembered that she was with someone. She couldn't leave him alone. Not when she was being followed and didn't know who was calling the shots or why.

She turned to him and twisted her hand so she could wrap her fingers around his wrist. "Chuck? I want to dance," she asserted, giving his arm a pull.

Chuck obediently rose to his feet with alarm on his face. There was no way she was seriously asking him to dance. Was there? He was a terrible dancer. He didn't know how to do anything. He had the gracefulness of a fat dog. This was going to be embarrassing.

"I'm not really a dancer," he objected, trying not to outright refuse. Dancing was fun and if she wanted to have fun, then who was he to rain on her parade? "I'm probably gonna step on your feet," he warned.

It was taking a lot of willpower not to just grab his other arm and yank. "My shoes have closed toes," she reminded, willing to say anything just to get him to come with her. If she could get him into the crowd then they could lose their unwanted tails.

Chuck was surprised she was so eager, but let himself be pulled forward when she tried again. He was pretty sure he was going to look stupid, but no stupider than most of the people already dancing. Besides, his soulmate wanted to have some fun with him. Why in the world would he say no? It was just a dance.

She pulled him away from the back part of the room and to the mass of thronging, gyrating, dancing people. It reminded Chuck of a frat party Bryce would have somehow persuaded him into checking out. Her grip on his hand was firm, so he hoped that she wouldn't feel if he started to nervously sweat. God, he was _so_ going to step on her toes. If he did it more than twice then he was just going to start charging himself a fee and donating the proceeds to her.

Daniela felt eyes still on them and turned around to face Chuck when there were enough people around them that they had a sort of protective buffer. The men on the wall furthest were trying to cut through people towards them, but they weren't drawing attention by being violent and shoving so their progress was slow. Dani was much more worried about the two that were closer, and it was hard to keep her eyes on both of them with the lights strobing and so many heated bodies moving. One of them stopped advancing and the writer saw a flash of sleek blonde hair that looked like gold in the amber-orange lights. Someone trying to dance would slow him down.

Her experiences with dancing were pretty vast. She liked to try new things. Tango and salsa classes, step and Zumba workouts, learning Indian dances, participating in festivals in the Middle East. Daniela liked dancing because in order to be good at it, she had to exert control and grace and power over her body. Dancing was a good workout which taught her to be cognizant of how her body moved and where all parts of her were at all times. Clubs, however, were not her preferred dance scene, especially not when her heart was pounding and she was trying to use dance as an excuse for working herself and her partner to the exit as fast as possible.

She had to let go of Chuck to really put herself into it, but she kept very close to him and never took her eyes off of him for long. Daniela tried to keep smiling like she was just having the time of her life, but the stress of the noise and lights and adrenaline made it feel like it was obviously fake.

Oh, did she move. Chuck's uncomfortable jiving felt twice as awkward while he watched her move and flex her body like a gorgeous and unfairly tempting model. He had seen Daniela's body as feminine and slender, but when she moved like this he could see she was strong and agile. She rocked her hips to the beat of the bass, twisting and stretching her body deftly while her hair tumbled loosely over her shoulders and down her back. And yet, it wasn't her hair or her arms or her chest that Chuck most wanted to stare at – it was her eyes, which were gleaming and sharp and intelligent even as she let go and just _danced_ with him. She kept looking at him and her smile was a little uneven, her teeth biting her lip just a tiny bit, and if she had been making a different expression with her eyes then it would have been the most seductive look he'd ever seen.

She kept heading backwards, occasionally touching Chuck to pull or entice him closer, and she did it while making cunning, inquisitive eyes at him. She had noticed how he stared at her eyes, even when she wasn't looking at him. If she had to then she'd make sultry eyes just to keep him compliant, but as it was, he was having fun and was easily coaxed forwards with her. Daniela made the path and Chuck followed in her wake like a puppy with its nose up to blindly follow a treat. She hated to make that analogy but it was the kind of response that she needed from him for the moment. The journalist checked again for the men in black.

She kept looking away from him. Chuck was really curious what she kept looking at, since it wasn't in the direction of the band. He looked over his shoulder and tried to follow her eyes, seeing motion lilted and halting in the lights. There was a tall man in a suit dancing with a shorter woman in a tight black dress. Her soft blonde hair fell in waves and shone in a rich, deep yellow color when the golden lights would flash overhead. She spun, pulling the man's arm around her waist and fitting her rear against his hips. Chuck only caught a momentary flash of her face before her head was turned towards her dance partner over her shoulder, but it was enough to stun him into slowing down.

 _Sarah?_ He squinted. What were the odds? He was almost sure that was Sarah's face, Sarah's blonde hair. She didn't look back at him, but twisted around while grinding so her front was against the man again, who looked chagrined and a little frustrated. _Join the party,_ Chuck thought sardonically, feeling somehow much more valid now that he saw other men struggling to keep up with their very attractive and energetic women.

He was still trying to decide if it was really Sarah, if he should go say hi and introduce Daniela, when his arms were grabbed and he was jerked forward. He whipped his head back around and was face-to-face with Ella, his hands yanked against her waist. She smirked at him, pressing closer. A lot of blood went up to his face and he hoped it would stay there as opposed to the alternative – she guided his hands lower, to the curve of her hips, and let go of his hands. He only had a moment to guess what she was doing before he felt her grip the backs of his thighs and slide her hands up over his jeans.

The writer squeezed his ass and apologized to him in her head. This did not seem like dancing he was very experienced with or prepared for, if the tentatively amicable but shocked and flustered look on his face was anything to go by, but something else had caught his attention and she really needed him to not stay still. There was a man in black coming closer faster than she would have liked, and groping him made him jumpy enough that she got him a couple of yards closer to the stairs before his steps slowed again.

She scanned the top of the crowd again. The blonde was insistently occupying that one dude, but there were three others. One of them she had lost track of and she quickly spun to check behind her and at the sides. She took advantage of Chuck's height and pressed back against him as fully as she could, holding his narrow hips in her hands and circling herself against his front sexily while her eyes roamed quickly. She spotted the man she had previously lost track of a few yards away, looking at her with a stubborn, mulish scowl.

She turned back around and snaked her arm around Chuck's shoulders. He had gone stock still, staring at the vixen in front of him. Maybe dance was more of a euphemism than he had ever realized before, because now this innocent trip to the club was feeling more like a scene out of _Dirty Dancing_ and Chuck could barely think straight enough to even know where to put his hands when she wasn't moving them on his behalf.

Daniela turned around in time to see as, over Chuck's shoulder, the man that the blonde had been dancing with dropped down. She tensed and looked for his partner. The other saw the same thing and started to move faster, only to stop and double over. What seemed like a struggle was cut short when the blonde from before pushed her newest partner up to one of the pillars and stabbed a short knife through his arm and into the wood.

She rescinded her earlier thankfulness for rowdy single women. That was not a random stranger unintentionally helping them out; it was a wild card she had no information about, but now knives were involved and it was time to give up on subtlety and get the hell out of Dodge.

As suddenly as the out-of-nowhere dancing had come from, Daniela stopped moving with the music (a pity) and grabbed firmly onto Chuck's forearm. He didn't even try to resist. The playful smile she'd been wearing was gone faster than he could blink, and she dragged him through a few more people and to the staircase before he could get a word in.

She held his arm so tightly he thought he might actually bruise. "If you didn't like the music, you could have just said so," he shouted to be heard, hurrying up the stairs behind her before she pulled his arm out of the socket. His heart thumped, but his nervous excitement was gone. Whatever was up with her was starting to weird him out a little.

Daniela didn't stop when they emerged on the ground floor, instead marching hurriedly straight back to the front doors of the bar.

Chuck let her pull him towards the exit, but tried cautiously to talk to her again now that the music was a floor away and more muffled. "Whoa, Ella, where's the fire?" He questioned, walking quickly to keep up with her. "What is going on?"

She glanced back at him, her face tense and her jaw tight. "We're being followed," she said to him shortly, not slowing down. Chuck's eyes widened – seriously? She continued, terse and brisk. "I don't know who they are but one of them took a knife, so it's probably not a friendly neighborhood stalker."

"What?!" He exclaimed, turning to look over his shoulder, almost stumbling out the doorway when he was led through it. "A knife?! But I – I didn't see anything!" He had just thought they'd been having fun, and now there were people getting knifed downstairs?!

The door to the stairwell was shoved open right before they got through the double-doors and onto the street. Daniela hustled Chuck in a beeline for the Nerd Herder parked parallel to the sidewalk. The blonde in the black dress – it _was_ Sarah, Chuck realized, breathing harder – emerged in a run and sprinted to catch up to them. Daniela turned around immediately, letting go of Chuck and raising her fists as if to fight.

"Chuck, give me your keys!" Sarah demanded, slowing down when she reached them a few feet away from Daniela, who had moved in front of Chuck defensively.

"Sarah?!" Chuck just yelled her name, increasingly puzzled, frightened, and overwhelmed.

"You know her?" His soulmate asked guardedly, keeping her fists up threateningly.

"She came to the store!" Chuck pointed at Sarah over Ella's shoulder while Daniela was considering whether or not Sarah had any places on her body to store more knives. "Her phone was broken!"

"I was scoping you out," Sarah told Chuck, impatiently ignoring Daniela's stance and holding her hand out. "Keys!"

"Well – I mean – look," Chuck started, stammering. Sarah impatiently bent over partway and pulled up her dress while Daniela tensed. She knew that trick, she used it herself. Sarah wore thigh holsters, one loaded with a pistol. Chuck must not have seen, because he was still rambling. "I-I don't mean to be old-fashioned, but the company only wants employees – nerds – driving the Nerd Herder." Sarah took something flat out from where it was tucked against her leg and shoved her dress down while throwing the flat object at Daniela, who caught it on impulse. "I mean, it's-"

"Shut up," Daniela snapped while Sarah ran into the street.

The blonde circled around the hood of the car and went to the driver's side, holding something small in her hand. She opened up the black fold with a hopeful suspicion which was confirmed by the credentials inside. _Central Intelligence Agency, Sarah Walker._ She tilted the badge, spotted the iridescent seal, and shoved the badge into the hand also carrying her own wallet.

On the other side of the car, there was a mechanical hissing noise and then Sarah popped open the previously-locked door. Chuck's jaw dropped.

"How'd you get into my car?" He asked indignantly.

"Get in the car!" Sarah ordered, getting into the driver's seat and unlocking the rest of the doors from inside.

Daniela pulled open the passenger's door. "You're CIA?" She demanded.

"CIA?!" Chuck repeated in a panic, which Daniela ignored.

"Who's after me?" Daniela asked. In general, she trusted her own government. She reached for her neckline and clicked her pen to make it start to record. With an insurance policy, she trusted her government twice as much. "What do they want?"

The CIA meant it was an international deal, which made sense, she hadn't tackled anything volatile within the States recently. But white men coming after her was a little bizarre. There weren't a lot of white people in Nepal, or India, or Iraq. Unless this was from longer ago, in which case the list of what it could be was too long for her liking. Damn it, and she had been so careful! She never even used her real name when she was abroad!

"They aren't after you, but if they catch you, they'll kill you," Sarah told her, leaning over in the car to look up through the open door. Her face was completely serious and urgent, and the agent's blue eyes kept looking through the windshield.

 _She's afraid of something,_ Dani realized, looking down the street. Sarah obviously knew who was following them, and she knew there was more to be reckoned with than the four that she had apparently taken care of in the basement.

"Will someone tell me what is going on?!" Chuck shrieked.

"Don't freak out," Daniela commanded, mind made up. Sarah was the less dangerous of two potential threats and the last thing she needed to deal with was Chuck having an anxiety attack.

She opened the back door and pushed Chuck until he was getting in, climbing into the back of his own car while a horn loudly blared. Daniela got into the passenger's seat so quickly she almost hit her head on the doorframe and slammed her door once she was in. Chuck's closed shortly after and right away, Sarah yanked the gear shift.

At the end of the block, a black SUV peeled around the corner with the tires screeching. The driver went straight through a red light and skidded their tires turning violently down the one-way street that the Nerd Herder was on. Sarah slammed her foot down on the gas and they took off backwards as the SUV accelerated, swerving dangerously around a smaller vehicle that almost got crushed under its tires.

"Seatbelt!" Daniela yelled. Chuck's buckled in the back a few seconds later after some metallic clinking and fumbling.

Sarah put her hand on the back of Daniela's headrest, looking between the windshield, the rearview mirror, and the back of the car while driving backwards in the wrong direction towards oncoming traffic. The SUV was gaining fast and Sarah moved both hands to the steering wheel, looking forward at the SUV and holding the car straight. She tried to push the speedometer up higher. The road wasn't busy but there were enough cars to make it a very loud and life-threatening ordeal. Daniela expected to crash any minute.

"Sarah you're not even looking!" Chuck yelped in one breath.

The buildings on the side of the street raced by backwards. The SUV drew closer. Its tires were bigger and it had the advantages of momentum and forward driving. Daniela realized very quickly that they had no hope of outrunning it unless Sarah could drive faster. She twisted in her seat and grabbed onto the headrest to balance on her knees and look behind them.

"Turn the wheel, your two!" Daniela started issuing directions. Sarah snapped the wheel as directed and the Nerd Herder veered away from a car which was slowing down to get out of the way, but wasn't going to be gone fast enough. She used clock numbers to be explicitly clear. "Eleven!"

With Daniela's instruction, Sarah drove around obstacles and sped up. The SUV fell behind, but only for a few seconds before the driver compensated by accelerating again, coming up much closer to the bumper than Dani would have liked.

It was only then that Chuck seemed to realize that the SUV was actually trying to run them over. Dani, from over the headrest, got to see understanding slowly dawn on his face, followed by shock and horror. "Who, w-w-wait, who are these guys, what do they want?!"

The SUV pulled forward. Daniela shouted another number to Sarah, right before Chuck screamed. Daniela slammed her shoulder hard into the headrest, grunting, and dropped down into her seat. The SUV had rammed the bumper, shoving the car forward and causing Sarah to briefly lose control of the wheel. The car swerved like it was on ice. Sarah pumped the gas and kept the wheel firmly straight until she had control again.

"Oh my God! Oh my God!" Chuck screamed.

Daniela pushed aside sarcastic thoughts about how useful that was and pulled her own seatbelt on, looking in the car's mirrors to see behind them. It wasn't great but neither was being rocketed into the backseat, so she'd take her chances. "Twelve! Twelve, now one!"

The SUV slammed into them again. It was higher off of the ground and hit them with so much speed that the hood of the larger car rode up onto the Nerd Herder's bumper. The car swerved and Daniela saw Sarah grit her teeth. The engine revved louder, protesting the speed. They were going well over eighty and it was pretty terrifying.

On the bright side, Chuck had stopped screaming. On the dark side, he was now whimpering about how he was going to die. Not the best encouragement. Daniela groaned quietly, torn between annoyance and sympathy.

"Gun," Daniela said to Sarah, holding her hand out.

"Gun?!" Chuck squeaked, looking at the back of her seat with terror. Everything had gone very, very wrong in a very short amount of time and now suddenly his soulmate was asking a CIA agent for a gun and counting off numbers like there was a standard practice for this sort of attempted vehicular murder. Who in the hell was she?!

"No time," Sarah replied, tightening her hands on the wheel. "Just tell me when to turn!"

Chuck looked out the window, seeing the turn into the next wide road coming up. Dread was settling into his stomach. That road was busier. This was not good, this was very, very, very not good at all. "Oh, uh, left, left in five seconds!"

The driver of the SUV slammed into them again for a third time. Daniela saw it coming and ground her teeth so she didn't bite her tongue on impact. The car went up higher on the bumper for the third time and Chuck's screaming was back at full volume right behind her head. The SUV was close enough for Daniela to almost make out the driver's face through the windshield.

Sarah accelerated hard, pushing the car to ninety and getting the bigger car off of them. The Nerd Herder's hood had a giant dent in the top now and was popped open, bent and broken under the weight of the SUV.

"Your left or my left?!" Sarah shouted back.

"Right!" Chuck yelled, which didn't help much.

"Three!" Daniela reported, tensing and grabbing hard onto the grip above her door.

"Too late!"

Sarah yanked hard on the wheel, turning the car to their left. The jump up onto the sidewalk made the car pop up violently. Daniela kept biting down on her teeth and held her tongue tensely back against the roof of her mouth. Sarah let off of the gas petal, but when Chuck's car tilted backwards and coasted down a wide set of pedestrian stairs, Daniela quickly decided she had preferred the straight-line speeding to the slower stair-riding.

The car jolted and bopped them around violently inside, dropping down stairs and straightening its wheels gradually. Each step made the passengers bounce. The SUV stopped at the top of the pedestrian entry, which wasn't large enough. Daniela mentally applauded Sarah for having the timing and steering ability to get the Nerd Herder in at such high speeds.

"Oh – my – God!" Chuck screamed, his knuckles going white as he held onto the locked car door for his life.

The car flattened out and he relaxed, breathing hard as if he'd run a marathon. He would have preferred a freaking triathlon to the nightmare he had just somehow miraculously survived. There definitely had to be an angel looking out for him. The angel should try harder because apparently his soulmate was _insane_. Anyone _sane_ would be terrified, not riding it out like a roller coaster!

Just as he relaxed, the car dipped backwards again for another flight of stairs. Chuck yelped again and whimpered, squeezing his eyes shut for the rest of the ride.

At the bottom of the stairs, the pedestrian path opened into the sidewalk. The car rolled past conveniently lowered barricades and onto the street, bouncing them again as they rolled rapidly onto the asphalt. Sarah swung the car around with the wheel again and pushed on the brakes to stop. The beaten-up car spun in a full 360, causing the tires to squeal and the destroyed bumper to scrape along the road. They finally stopped, "parked" across the middle of the two-lane street with the front of the car facing the stairs they had just driven backwards down.

The car was destroyed. More than just taking hits, it wasn't safe to drive. The bumper had been all but ripped off when the SUV rode up on top of it and was adhered thinly to the car. The hood, popped and bent and dented, had flown up while bouncing and rattling on the stairs, and now the scraped and misshapen metal was letting smoke escape from the damaged engine on both sides. Daniela spotted the license plate laying on the sidewalk. The SUV, which had stopped at the top of the steps, was gone.

"Who the hell is that psychopath?" The journalist panted.

Sarah turned around in her seat, breathing hard. "Listen to me, Chuck," she said firmly. Chuck finally opened his eyes and whimpered incoherently when he saw the smoke. "Those men will hurt you. They're from the NSA and they're after _you_."

" _Me?!"_ Chuck shrieked. His hands were trembling so hard he couldn't even make fists. "Why – what – why – why me, I mean, I'm nobody!"

Daniela's chest heaved. She dropped her head against the cool window and moaned softly. She had a headache. The temperature felt soothing. She tried to think – about the CIA, about the NSA. What was a domestic intelligence agency doing hunting down her soulmate? If this wasn't at all about her, then what the hell was Chuck hiding? And why were the CIA involved in a domestic matter, and why were there agents operating in clashing jurisdictions?

"I'm the supervisor of a Nerd Herd at a Buy More!" Chuck shouted. Never had he been so happy to say that he had such a useless and low-level job in retail. There was absolutely _no reason_ why the NSA, the CIA, the FBI, the – the ISBC, or the IRS or anyone else in the alphabet should want him dead! "Maybe one day I'll be assistant store manager and I don't even know if I _want_ that job!" Okay, off topic. "And you know what, that's not your problem," he said sheepishly, putting his head down in his hands.

Tires squealed. The sound was starting to make Chuck feel sick. All three of them looked up into bright headlights pointed right at them, making it hard to see anything. Chuck had a really, really bad feeling. "But that is," he moaned, raising his arm to cover his face.

The large car launched at them after the engine revved. Sarah tried to make the car move, but it wouldn't even putter, and there was no time to get out of the vehicle and get to safety. Daniela raised her arms to both sides of her head protectively and leaned back into her seat, bracing for impact.

She waited for the longest ten seconds of her life. Then it was like everything happened at once. The little red and white car crunched and turned, swerving and sliding on ruined tires into one of the two lanes. The SUV blasted right past after smashing the front of their car out of its way. The airbags made a sound like popping fireworks as they deployed, slamming into Sarah's and Daniela's faces, and Daniela was thrown sideways against the car window so hard that her arm broke the glass. Chuck smacked his head on the door next to the window and moaned sickly.

The SUV kept going until it didn't. The tires' angry screaming on the road as the driver made a U-turn made Daniela snap out of her stunned daze. She really did not think they could hold out against another hit like that.

She fumbled for the door handle with one arm and reached across the console to punch Sarah roughly with the other. Sarah grunted quietly in answer and started shoving at the airbags in her face. Her lip was bleeding and she looked a little dizzy, but Daniela thought she would be fine.

The passenger door opened after Daniela fumbled with it for a few seconds. The airbags were trying to force her back against her seat so she had to slide out sideways. Her arm was burning where she was cut by the glass of the window and both of her elbows felt sore and raw from the chemicals in the airbags. She coughed and stumbled out onto the road, turning right away to open the back door and get her soulmate out of his seat.

Chuck clicked his seatbelt off. He didn't know what the plan was but Sarah and Daniela were getting out and the idea of being left alone was so scary he was willing to get out and follow them just about anywhere. Daniela pulled his door open and bent down to help him. Something hot dripped down onto his legs. He looked and saw blood sliding across her arm.

"Ella," he gasped, winded.

She helped him out, her face grim. "Can you walk?"

"I – I –" Chuck wasn't sure except then he was standing up so apparently the answer was yes. "Wait, I-"

"Let's _go_ , Chuck!" Sarah snapped, rubbing the side of her head when Daniela looked up over the car. She was waiting for them, but so was the SUV down the road.

Daniela kept her hand firmly on his upper arm and pulled him into a run. He should have fallen down immediately – his legs felt like jelly, and he wasn't that good at running to begin with. The car's bumper was broken off for good now, laying in the street a few yards from where the Nerd Herder had stopped, and he started to fret over how he was going to pay for those damages before he remembered there were much more pressing questions.

Sarah turned as Daniela and Chuck caught up. Chuck saw she had a slight limp, but it was easing the more she moved her leg. Behind them, the engine of the SUV roared and the vehicle began to move.

Daniela breathed hard and looked around. She still felt like she wasn't thinking clearly, and she _hated_ that feeling, but the air was helping to clear her mind. The smell of burning rubber was absolutely acrid, but it was also a powerful reminder of what was at stake if they stopped moving. There was no chance they could outrun a car on foot.

They ran past the stairs they had rolled down and Daniela saw the posts in the ground that she had thought about earlier. The barricades meant to stop cars… they weren't just on the sidewalk, there was a row of them in the ground, placed two feet apart from each other. She followed the row in the street to a simple white-painted road station with a wide window and no attending policeman. There was a red button mounted on the side beneath a sign with capital red letters calling it an "emergency blockade station."

"Sarah!" Daniela called, pointing to the box on the sidewalk.

Sarah looked at it, looked down at the posts they had just ran past, and nodded briefly, her tangled blonde hair bobbing. "Get out of the way!" She gestured with her hand for them to keep going. Daniela nodded and pulled Chuck. He was her soulmate and her friend, her responsibility. She would have to hope Sarah could take care of herself.

Chuck stumbled on the first step, looking back to Sarah. What was happening? Why was she stopping? That car was going to kill her! They couldn't leave her! But Daniela kept running and Sarah bent down, taking something shiny and sharp out of a black strap around her ankle, and she stood up and looked right at the SUV.

"Sarah, look out!" He yelled, unable to watch.

Daniela looked over her shoulder, saw how close the SUV was getting, and grabbed Chuck's shoulder. "On your knees!" She hissed, shoving him down. Chuck collapsed. Ella was the first to see they were in danger and she had kept him alive this far, even if she was potentially completely out of her mind.

The writer knelt down in front of Chuck, shielding him with her body. No matter which of them the NSA was after, she was not going to let her clearly clueless soulmate be harmed. She pressed her hand into his hair to keep his head held down in case he decided to be stupid and look up, and covered the back of his neck with her other hand. She felt dangerously exposed with her own neck wide open to any debris, but Chuck was safe. That was what mattered. The civilian was safe. She watched over her shoulder.

Sarah waited until the last possible minute to make sure that the driver wouldn't have time to stop the car. Daniela tensed as Sarah just stood poised with her knife and admired the agent's fortitude. Finally, she hurled her knife with incredible precision and hit the trigger for the blockades straight in its center. She twirled with the momentum of her arm and bent her head, kneeling and shielding her neck. The posts shot up right before the SUV slammed into her, and the vehicle crashed violently into the posts instead. Sparks flew from under the hood over Sarah and pieces of the car came off as metal crunched, bent, and snapped.

Sarah stood up and hurried over the asphalt to catch up to the civilians. Chuck looked up when Daniela moved and felt his body start to shake again. The SUV was totaled even worse than the Nerd Herder. Had someone just died? Had Sarah just killed someone?

His soulmate pulled him up to his feet. Chuck couldn't concentrate. "S-Sarah…" he whispered, looking at the blonde. He couldn't decide if he was glad she was alive or terrified of what she was willing to do.

"She's fine, we have to run!" Ella urged.

Chuck looked back at her with horror. How could she just overlook that crash? "You think he survived that?!"

A low creaking sound came from the wreckage. They all looked over. Chuck tensed and made a weak sound that hurt his throat as the door was slowly getting wrenched open from the inside.

"Fucking airbags," Daniela cursed.

Sarah was on her phone when he looked at her again. It seemed so foreign to think that it was probably the very same phone he had fixed. "Request emergency air evac," Sarah said curtly, gesturing for them to come with her. Chuck nodded briefly, continuing to look back at the SUV. No one was out yet. Daniela knew it was a matter of time, and they didn't have much of it. "Track location, we're on foot."

Daniela looked around them for the tallest building and pointed out a dark one at least twenty stories high, slipping her hand down into Chuck's. She felt awful for him, he was so overwhelmed, and she could see he didn't appreciate the kill-or-be-killed mentality she and Sarah had slipped into. Chuck was horrified they caused the car to crash like that and didn't fully understand that if they hadn't, they might not still be alive.

The women took off and dragged Chuck behind them. He tried to keep up with his long legs and squeezed his date's hand tightly. She was okay and alive, he was okay and alive. She was bleeding but she was okay, and they were both going to be okay, and their next date wouldn't be nearly this awful. He had to tell himself that they would have another date. He had to believe that this wasn't the end of his life as he knew it. What on earth could he have done to deserve this? Was it for not recycling enough?!

"How are you not as scared and confused as I am right now?!" Chuck yelled at Daniela. "Is this the kind of thing you studied at Columbia?!"

"Kind of," she said, looking at him sideways and panting. Her breathing was hard but steady. "Political science."

Right, because that made sense. He definitely studied car pursuits in that one introductory poli-sci class. "Why do you know what's happening?! What _is_ happening, can I finally get an answer on that?!" Chuck begged. He felt like everything was coming apart; first his mind, then what little he knew about his soulmate, and now everything else was in the air and could be taken away. He didn't even know why. "Please?!"

Her sudden stop pulled on his arm and her fingers squeezed his hand. "I don't know what's happening, Chuck," she said, looking at him seriously, some of her hair falling messily into her pink, out-of-breath face. "I just know how to survive."

He gaped at her and moved his mouth like a fish. What did that mean, who was she, who was Sarah, why him, why the NSA, what did they want, how did he make this _stop_ -

Daniela looked past him in the direction of the SUV and paled slightly, yanking him into the building she and Sarah had agreed upon without giving Chuck a chance to see what had her spooked or what they had coming after them.

* * *

**A/N: I chose to segue back into canon territory for the resolution of this "episode" because I love the climax and resolution sequences; I think it excellently characterizes Sarah and Casey and provides a good glimpse at the adventurous, high-stakes job Chuck didn't volunteer for. I hope the segue was a feasible move at an enjoyable pace.**

**I am very nervous to post this, as this chapter and the next are very dense and action-heavy. All I can say is that the consequences to these scenes are considered as the story continues, though I am only prepared to post the first six chapters of the entire story at this point; as stated in my chapter one A/N, I am not willing to post more chapters as they are written because I prefer to have the option of revising while the writing process goes on. All that said, I hope you enjoyed this - please leave a review!**


	5. Chapter Five

Chuck hadn't known a human person could possibly go up so many stairs until he was yanked and badgered up twenty-two flights of them by a pair of very persistent women. Chuck thought Daniela's arms were strong – that was nothing compared to the steel she must have in her thighs to get up so many stairs. When they emerged onto the very, very high rooftop, his legs felt so weak that a breeze might pick him up and carry him right off the edge of the building.

He wanted to cry. Where were they supposed to go from the building? Whoever Sarah had called for wasn't there and all he could see were the lights of Los Angeles sparkling below and stretching out across his view. They were on top of the world but Chuck felt like he was plummeting underwater, and every minute he was left in the dark was another minute that his lungs were filled.

Sarah led them partway across the rooftop, getting further from the door down into the stairwell. She took her gun out of her thigh holster and held it with the safety off in one hand. Daniela kept an eye on it to make sure it didn't get pointed at herself or Chuck, but she wasn't too worried. Sarah was acting like she was on their team. At least with Sarah they weren't going to be run over by a car.

The blonde checked all corners of the roof while Daniela bent over and put her hands on her knees. Her lungs burned and her dress was ruined with sweat, debris, and blood. Sarah turned back around and stormed hurriedly back to the civilians catching their breath. Daniela looked up, poised for an argument or another rapid round of questioning.

"How well do you know Bryce Larkin?!" Sarah demanded, looking between Chuck and Daniela as if she were asking them both.

Daniela lost her breath again like she just went up yet another flight of stairs. That name was the last one she expected to hear tonight – she had known it since she was a little girl, and she was on her guard right away. Like hell was she sharing her precious names with the CIA. No fucking way.

"What?" Chuck looked up, his face red, and gestured at Sarah with a really confused and accusatory hand. "How do you – how do _you_ know Bryce?" Why was Bryce involved with this? What did he have to do with this?

Daniela switched her gaze to Chuck swiftly and felt her shoulders drain of energy. So there it was. The question had been directed at Chuck. He knew Bryce. Chuck and Bryce knew each other. Her soulmates had already met each other, and knew each other, and… and no, that didn't answer everything. Why were both of her soulmates somehow involved in this mess that had the NSA rearing to take a couple of civilians off the map?

Sarah took a big step forward, towards Chuck, when he confirmed that he did indeed know the man in question. "We worked together at the CIA!"

"The _what_?!" Chuck tried to take a breath but it didn't help. A couple feet away from him, even Ella was now looking like someone had punched her in the chest. "The CIA?! Bryce is a spy?! Bryce Larkin from Connecticut is a spy?!"

"A _rogue_ spy!" Sarah corrected angrily, her tone spitting mad. Daniela thought she might have been angrier at Bryce for going rogue than at Chuck or Daniela for anything they could have possibly done. "Did he try to contact you?"

Chuck shook his head quickly – Bryce could do great things and work for the government or go rogue and kill people, he didn't care, he just wanted to be left out of it. Bryce was part of his past and had long since made it perfectly clear that Chuck didn't mean anything to him.

"I haven't heard from Bryce in the…" Chuck's face fell. Except that wasn't true. Bryce wasn't in the past, not fully. "Wait, no, he's – he's sent me an email. Two nights ago."

Daniela looked at Chuck and then Sarah, trying to keep up with the volley of responses and the pain in her chest. It wasn't just wind burn or exercise anymore. She could live with her soulmate being a spy. For the most part, spies weren't bad people, they just had unsavory skills that they put towards protecting a nation. She had some unsavory skills she used to protect people, too, she understood, she could work around that, she could wrap her head around espionage and be faithful to a spy.

But she couldn't have a relationship with a _rogue_ spy. Daniela knew what that meant. There was no other interpretation when she was getting attacked by the NSA. It was a less alarming way of saying terrorist. Her soulmate was a terrorist, and he had dragged her other soulmate into his own mess. Now Daniela had to play a part in cleaning it up.

Her heart was dropping. All this time waiting with anticipation for her soulmates, and one of them was an enemy of the American people. _Her_ people. That was a lot to swallow at once. What kind of man did a terrorist have to be? She knew the answer and she didn't like it. How could she be meant for that kind of person? How could she ever be proud of being a soulmate to Bryce Larkin now?

Sarah advanced another step. "Did you open it?"

"Yeah, it was a, it was a line from Zork." Chuck gasped for breath and stood up straight, hurt and confused. Everything he thought he knew about Bryce was in the air. The student that became his best friend and then betrayed him without so much as an apologetic glance was… a spy? How did that change their history or Bryce's story?

"The hell is Zork?" Daniela asked, rasping with a sore throat.

"Uh, it's a video game that we used to play," he answered. Daniela shut her eyes and tried so hard not to think about what that meant. Chuck and Bryce had been friends. If she'd come a few years earlier, maybe they all could have been friends together… but now Bryce had torn it all apart. "It was like a riddle and I solved it and then there was, uh, pictures! Lots and lots of pictures."

Sarah's jaw went slack for a second before she asked tersely, "You saw them?"

Daniela looked at Chuck. She saw his throat move while he swallowed hard. His face was resigned and frightened. "What were the pictures, Sarah?" She asked lowly. What was it her soulmate saw, and why was it clearly such a bad thing that he had seen them?

Sarah didn't answer right away. She gestured with her free hand at Chuck demandingly. "Your computer, did you back it up? Is there an external drive?"

"It crashed a week ago," Chuck answered, belatedly thinking to ask how Sarah just already knew his computer itself wasn't working – and then he got his answer. Spies. Of course. That was her in his house. "Wait, wait, wait, hold on a second, was I not supposed to look at the pictures?"

A door creaked. It was hard to hear over the noise of the wind rustling across the tops of the buildings. Daniela said "Incoming!" as a warning to both Chuck and Sarah in case they missed it.

Sarah looked behind them, towards the rooftop door, and edged a bit away and to an angle. "Okay, Chuck," she said bossily, putting both hands on her gun and aiming it at the floor ahead of her. "I may have to aim my gun at you, so just don't freak out."

Chuck did the very opposite. Like hell was he going to stay calm when he was told he'd have a gun on him! Who the hell would stay calm after being told that?! What were the pictures, what did he see, was that email the real reason why his brain was messed up? What was he seeing, where was Bryce for all of this?

"Why?!"

Slow footsteps joined them. Daniela took one look at the black suit and put herself in between the man and her soulmate defensively. The man was tall like Chuck, but bigger and bulkier with muscle and stance. He already had his gun in his right hand. With his left, he touched a scrape above his brow which was slowly oozing blood from the crash. Everything about that man screamed danger, and not just because his short hair, boxy jaw, and broad shoulders matched the man she had seen through the windshield of the SUV.

Sarah waited for the NSA agent to say something first. Chuck put his hands on Daniela's waist, holding her smaller body gently and fearfully. He just wanted to go home. He just wanted to take his soulmate and go home and understand who she was and then rest easy and safely and not meet anyone else from the CIA or the NSA and also never see a car ever again for the rest of his hopefully very long life.

Daniela reached behind herself and put a hand gently on Chuck's hip. His hands were light and skittish on her body. She wanted to give him a little bit of comfort. As long as he kept behind her, and ducked his head if he were told, he would be safe. Assuming Sarah was trustworthy, and that was a pretty big leap…

The NSA agent pulled his hand back from his head and looked at the blood gleaming on his fingertips, letting out an irritated sigh. "It's late, I'm tired." He wiped his fingers off on his pants. "Let's cut the crap and give him to me, now. He belongs to the NSA."

Sarah whipped her gun up and held it on Chuck from her angle. Chuck swore his blood turned to ice and suddenly all he could see in his entire field of vision was the barrel of her weapon. Daniela swallowed and silently started a mantra of staying calm. Sarah had helped them escape the NSA the first time. She couldn't challenge them both. She had to focus on one threat and allow the less murder-y one a little bit of leeway, although it made her feet itch to protect Chuck.

"The CIA gets him first!" Sarah declared stubbornly, placing her finger on the trigger. Chuck's hands were clamping around Daniela's waist so tightly that she doubted he realized what he was doing. She squeezed his hip.

The NSA agent raised his own gun with an ease and quickness that gave Daniela pause. No one that confident and smooth with a gun would miss a shot at such a close range. He was aiming at Sarah, but that could change very quickly.

Behind her, the sound of Chuck's breathing picked up again. Dani felt the heat of his breath against the back of her head and squeezed his hip tighter. She didn't think talking would be smart but she needed Chuck to know it was crucial he not lose his cool.

"You come any closer and I shoot," Sarah threatened. Daniela believed her.

Mr. NSA, as she decided to call him, made a tiny gesture with his gun towards Chuck and Daniela, who was defiantly glaring at him. The motion was so small that his aim never cleared Sarah's body. "You shoot him, I shoot you, I shoot her. I leave all your bodies here and go out for a late snack. Thinking maybe pancakes," he added snidely.

Daniela updated her moniker from Mr. NSA to Mr. Trigger-Happy.

"Nobody's going to shoot anybody," she said to interrupt the standoff, glaring at Mr. Trigger-Happy when he turned his angry and quite possibly deadly gaze onto her. "Put your guns down, both of you."

"I don't take orders from the peanut gallery," Triggers stated coolly, giving her a once-over that left her feeling both pathetically small and completely incensed at the same time. It turned out that NSA agents weren't that much scarier than asshole agents of any other country or locality. "Who the hell are you?"

Daniela braced herself back against Chuck, taking comfort and strength in the warmth of his hands bleeding through to her skin. Her soulmate was trusting her. "I've been recording everything," she said, glowering. She didn't specify how because she definitely didn't want the trigger-happy douchebag to shoot her or her phone or her pen (which was still on her neckline). "It will automatically send to every major news outlet in the country unless I stop it, so put your gun down."

There. Accountability made people like him really start to sweat.

Chuck whimpered quietly. His hands were clammy. It sounded like Ella was just poking the big, muscular, and armed bear. He really wanted to just take her and run away and leave the agents to fight over jurisdiction on their own. That Mexican food wasn't sitting so well now that he was in a Mexican _standoff_.

Mr. Trigger-Happy tilted his head at her and made a noise in his throat that sounded like a contemptuous growl. Daniela jerked her head back slightly while staring. Who in hell actually _growled_ at people? Did he think he was a dog?

"I don't think your bosses are going to like you very much if tomorrow's headline is _CIA Agent Commits Treason_ ," the journalist threatened. Anyone who got hold of her pen's recordings would hear all about how Bryce was a terrorist who sent things he shouldn't have to someone unqualified to have them. That would reflect terribly on the American government, not just the CIA.

Triggers narrowed his eyes at her, gun still locked on Sarah. "You're not recording," he said gruffly, looking at her face. She knew he was looking for tells and intentionally gave him none. She wasn't lying. She was recording. "You're bluffing."

"Okay," she said flippantly, "If you're sure about that."

The NSA agent's eyes dropped down to her hand. "Hand over your phone."

She kept her expression straight. If he thought she was recording with her phone, that was just as well. Even if he shot it in a fit she would still have leverage. "When my partner and I are safe," she retorted.

The agent turned his gun onto her body abruptly. A red laser turned on and hovered above her eyes, threatening an execution shot. That just made her a lot angrier. He hadn't used the guide on Sarah, and she sure as hell wasn't going to let some bigshot attempted murderer intimidate her with the same trick she used to play with cats.

"Delete it without sending, or I'll start by shooting you," he growled.

"Even better," she hotly spat back at him. " _American Civilian Murdered by Government Agent._ There is power in media, Agent, and I think you know that, or you'd be off looking for pancakes by now."

The man balefully glared at her while Daniela glared right back, infuriated. He could hide behind the NSA if he liked, pretend that trying to murder them with his car was justified, but the truth was that he was a bully. Daniela did not like bullies. She hadn't let any of them win when she was in Brazil or Afghanistan, and that wasn't about to change in her own backyard.

The man didn't do anything. His gun was locked on her forehead, but quite frankly, standing on a rooftop in Los Angeles with a gun two yards from her face was a lot less unsettling than kneeling in the dirt in a desert half a world away with a gun right up against her skull. The only reason she felt like she was in a worse spot here was because she had her soulmate right behind her and if she died, then there would be no one to protect him. And Chuck was shifting anxiously, fidgeting. Wanting to run. Running was almost definitely suicide.

 _So what now?_ Sarah kept her gun up on Chuck but her eyes were on Daniela. With the NSA agent put in his place, there wasn't a clear script for what would happen next. She and Chuck were far from free to leave, but Daniela wasn't sure what she could do to further her bluff in her own favor.

Chuck squeezed her waist. Her hand had gone still at his hip. He imagined those piercing green eyes looking at the angry, shadowed eyes of the NSA agent and analyzing him, taking him apart from the inside out until she knew what to do, like she had known what to say to Chuck at Centanni. Then he thought of the pink roses sitting, probably crumpled and ugly, in the back of the Nerd Herder, still down on that street by the pedestrian stairs. Daniela had smiled so widely at the flowers…

She was protecting him and saving his life. He couldn't understand why she would do that, not fully, because although he knew they were soulmates, he was paralyzed and somehow she was brave and confident. She was scaring him. Ella was even less like him than he had thought. He didn't know this new part of her well enough to guess if he should be gratefully in awe or just plain afraid of what she had been leaving out during their conversations. He did know that whoever she was, she was his, and she felt that as strongly as he did.

The NSA agent didn't move a muscle, waiting for… something. The three of them to come to a consensus? No, that would be too easy, and he had made it clear that he wasn't going to put his gun down… but he also wasn't going to shoot them, not while Daniela was recording everything and leveraging that over his head. Whatever was in the email, whatever Bryce brought upon Chuck and Ella, the NSA agent's hesitation said that it wasn't worth a national outcry.

Chuck let go of her waist slowly. They were so focused on each other that he didn't think they would notice his hand move to hers where her fingers were splayed against his shirt. He took her hand gently, then tightened his fingers and yanked, making a break for it.

The pull on her arm nearly dragged her off of her feet. Daniela had great balance but she was startled and off-centered and had her heart in her throat for a few beats, expecting a bullet to fly into her head. "Oh!" She let Chuck pull her but grabbed at his arm with her other hand. "Stop!"

"Chuck, no!" Sarah shouted.

No gunshots were going off yet, but that didn't mean they weren't prepared to fire. Especially that man. Daniela couldn't see his eyes well in the dark but his expression was stony-faced and chilling. She pulled on Chuck's arm to make him stop and nearly ran into his back as he quit right in place, teetering precariously on the tips of his toes, staring over the side of the rooftop.

Daniela turned over her shoulder and put herself in the line of fire between Chuck and both of the agents. The greater distance made that a capability and although Chuck's panic probably set things back a couple of steps, at least she was better able to protect him now.

Chuck couldn't see. He was helpless, were his feet still moving? Was he standing still? Was he falling over the side of the roof? One second he was looking at the building he was going to be having nightmares about and then suddenly everything was flashing through his head again. _Pie army card lines grid stick man general TV cart stick red fire general Serbian Vuc Andric ID news map dynamite_ – and everything was on fire, and the building was going to come falling down like the World Trade Center.

Daniela took another wary look at the two agents, whom had looked at each other and agreed to converge. Sarah's gun was finally down. The NSA agent's was still on the journalist, but his finger moved off of the trigger uncertainly.

"Chuck?" Daniela asked quietly, giving him a nudge. She followed his eyes to the Westin Bonaventure Hotel. It was truly a sight that stood out in the cityscape, iconic to Los Angeles and the product of some excellent investment and architecture, and where she was definitely going to be late to a conference.

His soulmate's voice lulled him back to the present. Chuck's throat felt dry. How long had that taken, where was he still? Oh, right, rooftop. "They're gonna kill him," he whispered, stricken. It wasn't just that general who was going to die. It was everyone in the building, everyone around it. Hundreds of people, if not thousands. _Monsters._

Daniela looked at Sarah and put her hand on Chuck's shoulder, carefully keeping her body between the men. "Kill who?" She urged him to speak up. Whatever he knew, he needed to share – because whatever he knew, it was probably somehow related to why both of these agents had come for him.

"Stanfield!" Chuck yelped, startling Daniela into dropping her hand from his shoulder. "The general, Stanfield, the NATO guy!"

Daniela turned her head back to the agents and looked between the two of them. With fewer guns pointed directly at herself and her date, she was feeling a lot more charitable with information. "He's presenting in that hotel right now," she informed, pointing over at the black glass building.

Chuck turned around. He needed to see his soulmate. She was the one who was keeping him safe. She would know what to do. Chuck put his arms down helplessly.

"Look, something is wrong with me, okay?" He told her, then saw the agents moving closer and raised his voice. What the hell, he figured, everyone should be in on the disaster. "I don't know what it is but something is very, very wrong with me and I'm remembering things that I shouldn't even know!" He lifted his hands up to his head. He wanted them out, all of it _out_.

Daniela put her soft hands in his and moved their hands, together, down between them to hold. She squeezed his fingers until Chuck looked at her, and over her shoulders he saw Sarah and that Nerd Herder killer coming in closer. Chuck's eyes darted between them. Which one was scarier? Which one did he talk to? Sarah knew Bryce, but Bryce was a traitor in a much bigger way than just planting tests now.

"Ignore them," Daniela commanded, lifting one hand up from his and touching his cheek gingerly. Her voice gentled. "Okay? They aren't here. Talk to me. What are you remembering?" The hair on the back of her neck stood up anxiously. She did not like having her back to them, but the signs were clear. This, whatever Chuck had seen or now knew, was what mattered.

"I don't know, I don't know!" Chuck repeated stressfully, balling his hands into tight fists and squeezing her fingers in the one. "Things I never learned, I don't know how I know! But, uh, for example?" Chuck swallowed hard, looking at her green eyes. Beautiful green eyes. "There was – there was a Serbian demolitions expert in the Large Mart today. That's kind of odd, wouldn't you say?"

Daniela nodded empathetically. Pieces were slowly coming together. The seizure it looked like he had over the police brigade, and whatever had just stopped him from running away – they weren't seizures. They were something very different.

Chuck looked past Daniela. The green eyes were still on him and he knew they wouldn't be for long. She couldn't focus on one person, she always had to look at everything near her, so – so he was safe, her eyes would catch it if the others did something bad. If they tried to hurt them.

"Look," he said, helpless, things coming together in his mind. The information felt like it was synthesizing, like he was connecting dots and learning how to recall what he saw at will, miraculously with near perfect visual memory. Except he couldn't even remember what clothes Ellie had worn at his birthday party, so that was just another layer of _freaking weird_. "Last week, the NSA –" he pointed at the NSA agent. "You guys intercepted some blueprints. Blueprints of a hotel, _that_ hotel!" He pointed behind him, then at Sarah. "And then the CIA, you guys found a file of schematics of a bomb in Prague! The bomb is in that hotel!"

The NSA agent fluidly lifted his gun again, moving the guide over Daniela's body and settling the red dot on his forehead. He flinched and fought the desperate desire to crouch down and hide. The agent narrowed his eyes. "He _was_ working with Bryce," he accused.

"No," Sarah objected, her face amazed. Daniela looked between the two and tried to calculate the odds of getting all the guns to go down again. "He opened Bryce's _email,"_ Sarah told the other man.

Triggers turned his eyes back at Chuck, his face suddenly a lot less suspicious and angry and a lot more grave. Whatever was in that email, however Chuck knew about the bomb supposedly planted to take out Stanfield, Daniela gathered it was very, very serious business… serious enough for the CIA and NSA to both be involved, and serious enough for it to be the target of a terrorist.

Sarah looked back to Chuck and moved several quick steps closer, holding her gun at her side. "Chuck, those pictures that you saw were encoded with secrets," she explained heavily. "Government secrets. If you saw them then you _know_ them."

Chuck wanted to scream back at her that it didn't make sense. Pictures couldn't hold information; Chuck couldn't have government secrets in his head just because he opened an email. Except… he thought he remembered this from Stanford. In a class his senior year, the same one whose test got him expelled. His professor had lectured on coding data into pictures and the theoretical framework of visual memory and association. Bryce's email… the pictures he unlocked had taken all night to run through.

"… There were thousands of them!" He breathed, looking at Sarah pleadingly. _No, tell me it's not real._

"Wait a minute," the NSA agent interrupted, moving his guide in small circles on Chuck's forehead. "You're telling me _all_ of our secrets are in his head?"

Daniela could tell what he was thinking. Should he pull the trigger and let the classified intelligence die with the civilian, or were they too valuable to risk permanently losing? She was horrified. The notion of unwanted information being planted in anyone's brain made her skin crawl. It was sick. And her own soulmate had done this. Her own soulmate had signed Chuck up for this with no warning, no explanation, no invitation or consent.

"How is that even possible?" She asked anyone who would answer, finally losing her calm. That was a violation of the one privacy everyone was always guaranteed – their own head.

"Chuck _is_ the computer!" Sarah told Casey, getting excited and amazed.

"What did you – what did you say?" Chuck was going to throw up and it was going to be very embarrassing. What a great end to a _fantastic_ night. "What does that mean?"

"Chuck, you have to listen to me," Sarah ordered. "You have to tell us where this bomb is-"

"What is happening to me?!" Chuck screamed, pulling his other hand away from Daniela and taking a step back. He couldn't trust what he saw, he couldn't control his vision or his brain, he couldn't understand why this was happening or even really how and it was so overwhelming. What he really wanted to do was sit, and cry, and ask Bryce why the _hell_ he would ruin Chuck's life a second time.

"You said there was a bomb!" Sarah yelled back at him, raising her voice for his attention. "Is there time to stop it?" The NSA agent must have decided not to kill him after all, because the man lowered his weapon and turned off the laser.

"What – what, are you crazy?!"

"No, we're the good guys," the NSA agent said sternly, at which Daniela snorted. In her experience, good guys didn't commit vehicular assault and go back for another try. He was as good a guy as the assholes who complimented a girl and got mad when she didn't want to screw. "We get paid to keep bombs from exploding."

This was too much, way too much, and Chuck put his hands out to just stop them right there. He couldn't do this. This was so far out of his pay grade that it wasn't even registered on his pay scale. "Look, I can't – I can't help you!" He crossed his hands in a 'stop' gesture. "Okay? I really wish that I could, but I can't." That bomb was going to go off and destroy the building and people were going to die and he wished he didn't know because there was nothing he could do about it. "Call Bryce," Chuck snapped. "He's the guy that can save the day."

"Bryce is dead!" Sarah replied quickly, shutting up the panicking techie.

Chuck didn't know what to feel, but he stared at Sarah as if she'd grown another head. Bryce… dead? Not only was his ex-best friend a spy, but he was dead? Chuck had thought he was happy never seeing Bryce ever again, but he felt an empty pit in his stomach. With Bryce dead, there was no chance for them to ever make up. The last time they saw each other had been so full of resentment that Chuck could barely stand it, and now that was the last memory they would ever share.

Daniela dropped her eyes down to the floor. "Bryce is dead," she whispered, stricken. She knew she shouldn't show her hand, shouldn't let on even remotely that she had any familiarity with the rogue whatsoever, but it… it hurt… terrorist or not, he was her soulmate. Soulmates were an optional gamble but Daniela never even got to make a choice. She couldn't reconcile her hatred for terrorism and what he had done to Chuck with the crushing disappointment that she would never see his face or hear his voice.

"He died sending those secrets to you, Chuck," Sarah finished, sounding pained herself. Daniela raised her eyes to Sarah's face and saw grief. It looked like she and Chuck weren't the only ones who had some sort of relationship very abruptly ended.

Daniela looked at Chuck. This soulmate was still alive, and he was a good man (she thought). Innocent of this government catastrophe, at least, but now they were irrevocably in the middle of an incredibly serious problem, and the threat of a bomb was still hanging over her head like an ax. All those people in that conference, and everyone in the radius of the fallout, were all going to die… all because her soulmate went dark and stole secrets he never had a right to steal. If the CIA and NSA had the information Chuck had, they could have _done_ something.

The NSA agent raised his arm with the gun suddenly and fired into the air. Chuck yelped as Daniela flinched and bowed her head reflexively. She always looked down when she heard gunshots. She never wanted to see if the blow was about to come or watch if someone else was dead or hurting.

"Yeah, and he's gonna have a lot of company unless you start talking," the man threatened, and sarcastically tipped his head at Chuck. "So pretty please," he sneered, "Can we defuse the bomb now?"

Chuck's voice came out as a wordless, dry squeak while he shook his head and found the words. "I – I can't, I don't know anything about – I can't!"

Daniela turned to Chuck and put her hand gently on his cheek. She couldn't imagine how scared he was, how fundamentally violated he must have felt. She gingerly tipped his head forward so that his forehead could touch hers. His brown eyes fluttered shut and his breath puffed unsteadily over her lips. She stroked her thumb over the bone in his cheek.

"Chuck," she said, soft and quiet. Triggers wasn't doing anyone any favors, but he had a point. All of those people whose death warrants her soulmate had practically signed… This was _wrong._ She had to make it right. "Think," she encouraged, squeezing the back of his neck lightly with her other hand. "Just take a deep breath and try to think. Okay?" She gave him a few seconds. "You saw the blueprints," she reminded him. "Did anything stand out to you?"

How would he know? Chuck didn't read blueprints, he wasn't an architect, he didn't know what was where – except, he supposed, he kind of did know… the skill was there, it was like reading a map, and if the picture he could hold in his brain was able to save so many people then it would be really, incredibly selfish of him to turn it away just because he didn't want it…

 _So many people._ He saw so much dynamite. That was going to level the entire hotel, and if Daniela's hard drive hadn't crashed, if she had never come to the Buy More and met him, hadn't been on a date with him, she wouldn't be here now. She would be in that hotel, attending the conference, in the same room as Stanfield, oblivious to the bomb that was so close to ending her precious life.

He opened his eyes worriedly, breath hitching. "You're supposed to be there," he said, his lip trembling. "You're supposed to be in that building and if – if you weren't here then you'd be there with the bomb, you could've died tonight, you could've-" If not for that random malfunction of her laptop, then by the end of the night he would have lost his _soulmate_. He could barely even form full sentences.

She cut him off soothingly and turned her head, keeping her forehead against his and looking into his frightened and mournful eyes. "Yes, Chuck, but I'm not," she said, giving his neck another little squeeze. "I'm here, with you." She gave him just a second to remember that. She was alive. Then she continued. "But I'm not the only person meant to be there, and they all have soulmates and families, too. Please, try to help me so those people don't lose loved ones tonight."

Chuck shut his eyes, leaning against her and trying to think through the chaos. His soulmate was here, but he would have been so crushed if he saw her name on a list of the dead tomorrow morning. If Devon were there in that conference instead, Ellie would be heartbroken. What if it were Morgan? Or Ellie herself? His own family…

Chuck took a few deep breaths. There was so much pain weighing in his chest, and that was only his own about a scenario that hadn't actually happened. He couldn't walk away, he had to _try_ to save so many people from that incredible suffering. He paid special attention to the soft touch of Ella's hand against his throat.

He gathered his thoughts. The bomb was in the hotel, and the target was the general, which meant it would be somewhere on, under, or near the stage where he gave his speech, and it would go off _during_ the speech for the best odds of killing the – the target. Chuck felt his stomach roil thinking about a human person like a walking bullseye.

He opened his eyes, slowly exhaling, and lifted his head from Daniela's. She let her hand slip off of his neck and down his shoulder. "According to the schedule," he said hesitantly, looking over her shoulder at the agents, "The general's already on the stage."

* * *

The elevator was a much faster ride down than taking the stairs the whole way, but it was awkward, to say the least, to stand patiently and listen to generic elevator music with Chuck, Sarah, and the very agitated NSA agent. Dani supposed she should be glad no one was trying to shoot or hit anyone anymore, but from the repulsed and disgruntled looks the two agents kept giving each other, the desire was still there.

With no car to speak of, they had to get to the hotel on foot. Daniela knew that a lot of people weren't used to running so much every day, but it was really frustrating to have to pull on Chuck like a Raggedy Andy to get him to keep up. The Westin Bonaventure, visible from the rooftop of their would-have-been evacuation site, was a few blocks away and loomed above them massively. Daniela still clearly remembered watching the Twin Towers fall on 9/11. She couldn't imagine seeing it happen again. Then again, if they couldn't stop the bomb, she wouldn't be seeing much of anything.

The four ran past valets at the front of the building and into the lobby. It was a gorgeous open area, designed to have a very high ceiling and a shallow but long fountain running through the middle of the room. Deep red carpets gave it a feeling of luxury and paired well with the golden trims. Sarah stopped a few feet inside.

"Casey, wait," she called. The NSA agent turned back around and Daniela made note of his name. "We can't take him in, he's too valuable!"

Casey took a long stride back to Chuck, who looked at Sarah in confusion. Since when was he more valuable than the ability to find and stop a bomb from exploding? Before he could ask, Casey put one large hand to his throat and the other to his shoulder and took him swiftly down to the floor. Daniela winced and stood beside Sarah, scanning the lobby for anything suspicious. Someone was looking at Chuck in concern, but that felt more like a normal reaction to assault than something to worry about.

"Okay, Johnny Commodore," Casey slapped Chuck's chest hard. "You stay here, but you tell us where to go."

"Uh, the easiest way?" Chuck checked, blinking up at Casey and speaking through the ache in his back. He pushed himself up on his elbows and peered down the hallway on the other side of the teal blue water in the fountain.

Daniela, exasperated, replied before either of the spies could. "No, Chuck, bomb, _fastest_ way!"

"Oh, the fastest," Chuck nodded, thinking that made more sense. "Got it." He got himself up to his feet and started running. Who knew how long they had? If they wanted the fastest directions then they should follow him, not stand and wait for him to talk and risk misunderstanding what he said.

"Chuck, stop!" Sarah objected while the techie jumped into the fountain. "Wait!"

Daniela took off right behind Chuck and leapt into the water. She was glad, for once in her life, that she wasn't wearing running shoes – the mesh in her good shoes would dry out a lot slower than her flats. Again, not the most important thing and possibly not something she would live long enough to really appreciate. Splashes behind her followed as Sarah and Casey pursued, and, treading water, Daniela leapt out of the fountain and sprinted behind Chuck.

"Uh." Chuck ran down the corridor and looked at the plaques on the wall when he came to a split in the hall. He pictured the map he kept seeing and turned to the left as Daniela, Casey, and Sarah caught up with him. "This way, this way!" If he ran fast enough, they might get there in time, which would be really, really nice. Also, if he ran fast enough, Casey wouldn't be able to catch him and shove him over again, which had really hurt. The man was as strong as he looked.

The hall was almost empty since the conference had already started. Several sets of double-doors opened into the ballroom which was being repurposed for the sake of the NATO event. Chuck stopped quickly, bent over a bit, and pointed at one of the doors while babbling. Daniela suspected he was trying to say "this one" but it was coming out incoherently around his panting breath. Casey shoved open the heavy door with Sarah just behind him, and Daniela grabbed Chuck's elbow and pulled him in behind the agents.

They emerged at the very back of the conference, as far as possible from the stage. Many large tables were arranged in a pattern that made the most of the available space. Each table was covered with matching white cloths and sets of dishware for a dinner that wasn't yet served. Only a few spots were empty – the journalist briefly wondered which was hers – and along the walls stood hotel staff, private security, and catering employees who were listening without formal invitation or seating. At the front of the room, General Stanfield stood behind a podium, speaking into the microphone while dressed in full uniform.

"It is our mission to give our nation's diplomats the military perspective on world issues," he was saying. It sounded like he was finishing his introductory segment.

The room was so large that there were plenty of places to hide a bomb. It could be in the podium or under the stage or even under a table, depending on the size. Sarah turned to Chuck and whispered at him. "Chuck, where is it?"

"I don't know," Chuck said, trying to look but not knowing what to look for. "I don't, uh…" He tried to find the Serbian. Vuc would be the one delivering the bomb, right?

Daniela muttered under her breath at Casey, "Look at the uniforms." In her experience, anyone who wasn't supposed to be where they were blended in with uniforms. No one questioned an employee or an officer's right to be somewhere.

She identified four types of uniforms off the bat. There were the black, red-accented uniforms that the hotel employees were, complete with little concierge hats; military uniforms that Stanfield's protective detail all wore; black suits that the additional private security detail wore; and the red and white uniforms of the catering staff. She ruled out all women and everyone whose skin wasn't white and searched specifically for Slavic features.

The redheaded man in the catering costume only caught her eye so quickly because he was slowly but steadily making his way towards the back along one side of the ballroom. He was too far to make out details of his face, but he had fair skin like most Balkans and was looking not at the general, but towards a serving cart in the middle of the room. Daniela pointed. It was covered up with a silver serving top and the cart had long white drapes around the sides, completely covering anything it held. The man's uniform made sure no one questioned it.

She elbowed the NSA agent slightly more violently than she had to. "There!"

The four ran for it, disturbing the people who saw them moving between tables (pretty much everyone in the back half of the room). Sarah and Casey split around the cart and met in front of it again like they were very used to working as a team, even if they weren't usually on the same side. Casey lifted up the silver platter cover and slid it back while Sarah ripped open the white drapes. There was a computer sitting open on the platter, running a green countdown clock at **01:27:81** and the lower tier was packed with enough sticks of explosives to put Wile E. Coyote to shame.

"Oh, God," Sarah breathed, seeing all the wires. Chuck made another whimpering sound in his throat.

The general hadn't noticed anything going on and continued his speech, considering the difference in perspective between active duty servicemen like himself and the majority of Washington policymakers. Daniela knew it was only a matter of time before security saw what was going on and she fingered Sarah's badge in her hand, stepping just to the side of Casey so her legs and the skirt of her dress would help cover the explosives from view of the conference.

"No time to evacuate," Casey observed, looking at the packs. Daniela saw black print reading Comp 4 along the blocks and grimaced. That was even worse than dynamite. If that bomb was allowed to go off, it was for damn sure going to take the entire hotel with it. "Ideas?" The NSA agent asked, looking to Sarah.

"Disconnect the laptop," the blonde said immediately.

"There's no trigger," Casey replied, running his hand quickly along the back side of the laptop and finding no plugs. "The cables?"

"There's too many," Daniela cut in, kneeling down to see. "That's suicide." And mass murder, but she was getting the feeling that Casey wasn't exactly an altruist.

One of Stanfield's lines was loudly interrupted. "The hell do you think you're doing?!" A man's voice yelled, making all four look up. To Dani's surprise, it was a hotel manager, not a security staffer, who questioned them first. His volume made more people look over.

The journalist flipped open Sarah's credentials and intentionally held them so that her fingers covered up the blonde's ID photograph. She flashed them to the manager just long enough for him to see what agency she allegedly worked for while simultaneously walking him backwards and further away.

When she moved, the shield of her dress was gone. People looked between Chuck and Casey and saw the C4 stacked in the serving cart and began to panic. Someone in military uniform went up onto the stage and whispered to Stanfield away from the microphone. Daniela turned from the manager and went back to her allies while the guests at the tables closest to the bomb were hurrying to get up and leave.

The general turned back to the microphone. "Um, ladies and gentlemen, we – we may have a cautionary situation here, so we'll take a short break." He was barely done speaking before his fellow servicemen and private detail were leading him off of the stage and taking him out through another door at the front of the room.

"Chuck, is there anything else you remember about the bomb?" Sarah asked urgently. The countdown was down to a minute.

Both of the agents stared at Chuck intently for any help, but Chuck just looked terrified, stuttering and moving his hands helplessly. Daniela walked to the other side of the cart and pulled the drapes aside there, too. Chuck's pocket started playing Journey's "Any Way You Want It" and he hurried for his phone quickly. Both of the agents gave up on that avenue of questioning and looked back at the bomb.

To say that Chuck was annoyed by the bad timing was an understatement, but he didn't want to panic his friend any more than he wanted the panic in the ballroom to worsen. "Hey, Morgan," he said unhappily, eyes glued to the C4.

"There's no pressure plate," Ella reported, looking at the back of the bomb.

 _"Hey, how's it goin'?"_ Morgan casually greeted, having no idea of the life-or-death crisis Chuck was in.

"Uh, little busy right now, Morgan!"

"Move the laptop, pull the wires," Casey shot down the writer's suggestion, looking under the cart at where wires were bound together with electrical tape and threaded up through a hole in the cart to the computer.

 _"In a good way?"_ Morgan missed his tone completely. _"Details!"_ Chuck groaned quietly. Even if he were getting very lucky, he would definitely not stop midway just to relay it to Morgan.

"Same end as cutting them," Casey finished gruffly.

The laptop was making a beeping noise while the countdown raced further and further down. Chuck knew it wasn't possible for the time to actually speed up, but it sure felt like it was.

"Why are you calling?" He asked hastily, trying to get to the point. He didn't want Morgan to overhear some massive bomb going off, and he didn't want to be on the phone when it happened. _If_ it happened.

"We need to stop the countdown!" Sarah said with alarm. Daniela's lips tightened and she looked like she wanted to snap back with something sarcastic.

_"I dunno. Just… layin' on your bed, Ellie's with the Captain, my computer's got a case of the Demovas, so dude, I figured I'd check in!"_

The death of Morgan's computer reminded Chuck of the virus they were dealing with at work. Every computer subjected to the Demova porn site died completely – it couldn't do anything. It definitely couldn't run a countdown. It was a longshot but if the countdown was the trigger and not just a dramatic timer…

He hung up on Morgan and dropped down hard onto his knees between the agents. "Okay," he said, his heart hammering. He pulled his sleeves back. "Okay, I have an idea." He reached for the laptop's keyboard.

Casey stopped him, grabbing his arms and holding his hands down and together so tightly that the bones in his wrists were grinding painfully. "That's not an Xbox," the NSA agent warned him temperamentally, "And you're not an X-man."

"I understand that," Chuck told him quickly, fingers itching. The longer they waited the less time they had. The virus didn't work instantaneously. Daniela and Sarah looked at each other over the top of the cart. "This is a Prism Express laptop, okay, we sell this at our store. It has a doss override."

From the look on Casey's face, he didn't know the first thing about computer overrides. Daniela looked from the frightened but determined expression on her brave soulmate's face and then cased the room again. It was a lot emptier than it had been a moment ago, but there were still at least a hundred people inside and it wasn't just this single room that was in jeopardy. It was everyone in every room on every floor of the building, and everyone nearby outside.

"I think I can do this," Chuck told Casey, pulling at his hands against the agent's grip. "I can do this, please."

There wasn't time to argue. They had no better options and none of them knew computers better than Chuck did. Daniela made an executive decision. "Attack the hard drive?" She questioned briefly. Chuck nodded, looking relieved that she was listening. The writer reached over the cart and grabbed Casey's arms to make him let go. "Do it."

Chuck reached for the mouse and brought up an Internet browser window in front of the countdown screen. His fingers were shaking. The numbers were covered now but there were less than twenty seconds.

"Mr. Bomb," Chuck said, breathing deeply and typing as quickly as he could in the address bar, "Meet Mr. Internet."

Casey rolled his eyes and looked behind Chuck's head at Sarah. "He's searching for porn!" He tattled irately.

In response, Chuck put up one hand with a finger out, making a wordless, incoherent shushing noise Daniela had never heard before. He read the html one more time and pressed on the enter key. The hotel Wi-Fi directed the browser to Demova's website in just a second and the embedded video on her homepage began to play through the computer's audio.

Daniela arched an eyebrow while Chuck cowered away from the computer. She moved around the cart while an accented female voice purred through the speakers, asking if she was sexy. Daniela bent over Chuck to watch with her hands on his shoulders as popups blew up the screen, covering the video of the Slavic woman on her bed. In practically no time, the sound of her voice was distorted into something very un-sexy and the colors were blurring and creating glares and streaks of black while error messages piled up on top of one another. The beeping of the bomb was nearly constant. Chuck shut his eyes tightly.

Nothing happened.

The laptop screen turned black and a little spark flew from the keyboard as it shorted. Daniela squeezed her man's shoulders while Sarah loudly gasped with relief. The warning light wired above the C4 went out and stayed out. Casey looked away from the laptop like he was sulking that Chuck defused a bomb with porn, of all things.

Sarah looked at Chuck with a wide grin. "You did it," she noted, clearly pleased.

"I did it," Chuck agreed, starting to beam. "I did it! I – I defused a real bomb!" Hundreds or even thousands of people were safe now, no one was going to die, the Serbian was going to go to freaking jail and he was going to get to go home and _not_ be dead! "I defused a _real_ bomb!" It felt amazing. He'd been smart and fast enough to be like James Bond. Not so much of a disappointment or a burnout now, was he? "I did!"

Daniela was amused by his celebration but figured that he deserved his moment of triumph. "Not bad for a nerd," she commented in praise, pressing a proud kiss into his hair.

Chuck never should have had to do that, and no one should have had to come so close to dying, but at the end of everything, no one was going to die in the hotel because of Bryce. Even if he were still alive, she would never forgive him. There was no excuse for the jeopardy he had placed all of these innocent people in.

The techie's laughter slowly died while his smile fell. He frowned at the dead computer. He had defused a bomb… but he had just been hoping that it would work. It could have very easily not worked, or been too late. What had seemed like a victory a moment ago was now hollow and sickening. He had gotten extremely lucky. That kind of luck was unreal.

"What… what if I was wrong?" He asked queasily, looking over his shoulder and up at Ella. Hopefully she wasn't going to say the obvious answer that they all would have died in a horrible fireball.

The journalist gave him a small, sympathetic smile and patted his shoulders with both hands. "Breathe deep," she advised.

Casey used Chuck's shoulder unnecessarily roughly as a crutch for getting up. "Don't puke on the C4," he grumbled.


	6. Chapter Six

It was hard to believe everything that had happened in the last two hours. Daniela tried to make a list in her head. Since finishing dinner, she had seen Chuck have some sort of weird not-seizure; been to a concert with him; fled said concert while NSA musclemen tried to get to her and Chuck; met a CIA agent; been in a hot car chase which very nearly killed them; met an NSA agent; learned her second soulmate, Bryce, was a terrorist; learned Bryce was also dead; learned Chuck's not-seizures were the result of extremely classified government information coded into his brain through images; teamed up with the NSA agent that tried to kill them; and defused a bomb.

Wow. Those were an intense two hours. She looked at Chuck worriedly. Even she wasn't used to that much action in such a short time. He looked like he was waiting for someone to come to him. Casey had taken to managing the rest of the evacuation while Sarah worked to cover up what had happened and contact the people who could do more to make it work.

The civilians stood on the sidewalk outside the hotel, watching valets fetch cars and taxis for those of the guests who were patient enough to wait instead of taking off as fast as they could. Daniela walked a few paces to get to Chuck and leaned over to nudge her shoulder on his. He looked away from the main doors of the Westin Bonaventure and gave her a hesitant smile.

"It's been a rough night," she acknowledged quietly. "You don't have to pretend you're okay."

"Actually, uh, I do," Chuck disagreed, furrowing his brows and rubbing the back of his neck. "Because I can't tell anyone even half of what's happened."

Daniela hummed. It wasn't an issue for her; she was used to keeping information to herself, and she didn't have anyone she was super close to that she would particularly want to tell. From listening to Chuck talk about his sister and his best friend, it was clear that he was very close with his family. Keeping this big secret was going to be difficult. The bomb was neutralized, but there were still government secrets in his head.

Casey exited the doors side-by-side with someone in a Kevlar outfit, probably part of an explosives management unit. The NSA agent immediately left the man from the bomb squad and went towards Chuck and Daniela where they stood. Dani shifted her shoulders and squared up in preparation. Casey had several opportunities to shoot them at point-blank range and hadn't, but that didn't mean she was going to forget his 'vehicular homicide now, questions later' policy.

"The rest of this mess will get sorted," he said to them bossily, standing tall and crossing his arms. The cut on his head had stopped bleeding. He turned his eyes specifically on Daniela. She looked back at him without blinking. "Delete the recording," he ordered, sounding like he was grinding the order from between his teeth.

"What recording?" She asked innocently, inwardly smiling. She was enjoying this a bit too much. Pettiness was a character flaw the writer was well aware of.

Casey positively growled out his reply. "The one on your phone."

"Oh. That." Daniela blinked at him owlishly and tilted her head with a smirk. "I was totally lying about that," she admitted freely. The best part about the exchange was that she didn't actually have to lie about anything. Casey had drawn a very reasonable, but very incorrect, conclusion. She loved her inconspicuous little pen. "Bluffing my ass off," she added misleadingly.

Casey tilted his head with his lips curling in an angry sneer. He looked like he considered hitting her before he thought better of it and left Chuck and Daniela in peace. The agent headed towards Sarah, who was getting off of her phone and looking really tired.

Once Casey was gone, Daniela nudged Chuck with her elbow. "I totally recorded it," she confessed quietly. "Are you alright?"

Chuck lifted his right arm and looked down, rubbing his hand over his upper arm. His sleeves were still pulled up. "Yeah, yeah…" he said, trying to comfort himself. He always rubbed that part of his arm when he needed some comfort. He still felt her eyes on him. "No," he corrected himself, sighing. "I still don't understand what's happened to me, or – or why they're here," he nodded in the direction of Sarah and Casey. "Or… Bryce…"

A terrible thought struck Chuck. Soulmates were almost always reciprocated, but there were always those exceptions when they just… weren't. One person was great for the other, but not vice versa. Most of those people who accepted soulmates whose names they didn't have ended up in abusive relationships, which was why most people theorized about the unevenness of the relationship: one person didn't have their partner's name because anyone who abused them wasn't the best for them. He didn't think Bryce would have been like that, but he needed to make sure Daniela knew…

"He was my roommate in college," Chuck told her, looking up worriedly. He didn't want to make her upset, or see what she looked like when she was sad, but she deserved to know. "Ella, Bryce – he had your name." he added. "I don't know if he was ever yours but-"

Daniela held up her arm solemnly. Her own arm was blank, he saw – and for a moment he was terrified that she wasn't even his, much less Bryce's, until she said simply, "Tattoo cream," and stroked her left hand over her arm. "He was mine." Her frown was small but her eyes were sad. No, not sad… disappointed. "I know. I didn't know he was your friend, and I'm sorry, Chuck."

"I'm just sorry for… everything." Chuck put his arm down and Daniela followed suit. "Before – at Stanford – he was just…" Bryce had been amazing at college. Smart, playful, ambitious, funny. His humor had always been a little bit on the mean side – thinking it was hilarious to shoot Chuck in the head with Nerf darts, or laughing when someone he disliked was accidentally hurt – but he'd known where the line was. He more than made up for his humor with being a loyal and caring friend. "I don't know what happened," Chuck said helplessly, lifting his shoulders. "He changed."

Daniela wasn't sure if Chuck was trying to comfort her or himself. She knew nothing about Bryce except what she heard secondhand and that was never going to change. It just… she would never have the opportunity to learn anything for herself. That sucked, but the advantage was that she never had real, concrete feelings for the man. She was going to mourn, but it would be mourning for the concept of a soulmate as opposed to the much more painful mourning for a person.

She couldn't decide if she envied him or not. He'd gotten to have experiences with her other soulmate, but a couple of those experiences had been really, really bad, and now he was going to have to grieve for a once-close friend amid some very volatile and confusing emotions.

Daniela exhaled deeply and reached for Chuck. He lifted his arms slightly as she settled hers around his shoulders, giving him a hug. After just a second, he closed his arms around her waist and bent his neck to lean his cheek against the side of her head. He squeezed her a little bit tighter and turned his nose against her hair. She smelled like sweat, and the stench of burnt rubber was clinging to her. He bet it was still on himself, too. Underneath those, he thought he could smell a nice shampoo.

She pulled back after a moment and Chuck reluctantly but quickly opened his arms to let her go. Daniela smoothed her dress and pushed her hair back over her shoulders. His hug felt warm and safe, but she was a little too high on leftover adrenaline to want to stay still and be held.

"I'm sorry he's gone, but we're still here." The writer said to him seriously, looking up into his hazel eyes. "Chuck, I'm not going to pretend to have all the answers, and I know you must have some questions for me after what happened this evening, too."

She paused to let him put in some words if he had any, and sure enough, Chuck started to nod vigorously. "Yeah, uh, just a few, yes."

"I'm an open book," she volunteered, wincing a bit as she did. It didn't come naturally to promise honesty and transparency, but more than just being soulmates, they were now in a situation where they couldn't afford not to trust each other. "And I think I'd like to stay and help you figure out those other answers, too."

Chuck nodded a bit to show he was listening. It took him a pause to realize that she was trying to ask his permission for her to stay. "Oh, I think I'd like that," he hurriedly answered. "That'd be nice. In a way I – I guess I should be glad this happened or I would have lost you, too." He sent a quick look at the hotel and flinched. The vision of it blowing up was still clear in his brain.

"I'm glad I met you and I'm glad I can help where I'm needed, but Chuck, you shouldn't be glad for getting dragged into the CIA and the NSA's world," she cautioned. Daniela knew enough about the intelligence community to know it was something she had wanted to stay out of, and she'd made sure to do that even when she took on controversial or dangerous assignments. To say she was less than thrilled about being pulled in now was an understatement.

Her warning made him curious what kind of expertise she had and what she thought was going to happen to them next. He shivered, telling himself it was just because it was cool out, and wanted another hug.

"How would you feel about another hugging situation?" He asked, hoping that he didn't sound too needy.

"I'd welcome it," she responded, putting her arms out and hugging him again. They gave each other a little more comfort by holding on for a few seconds before Daniela was, again, the first to step back. Normally she loved to hug the people she trusted and cared for, but she was too tightly wound.

She put her hand out for his and Chuck grabbed her fingers, holding on gently. The journalist braced herself for another night in her cheap hotel and another dull morning. Nothing was going to seem right for a few days. She gave Chuck a gentle pull on his hand to get him walking and they headed up the sidewalk. She wasn't sure where to, but they needed to find either some public transportation or walk themselves somewhere for the rest of the night.

They passed Casey and Sarah. Daniela had thought about going in the opposite direction, but seeing as how Casey had been willing to stop at nothing to get Chuck the first time around, she thought it was best that they knew she was taking him home lest the poor guy became the subject of another high-speed manhunt.

"Not my job," Casey was saying to Sarah adamantly when they got within earshot. "I break things, I don't fix 'em."

"What about his job, and his friends?" Sarah argued intensely, glaring up at Casey angrily. "And what do we do about his sister?"

Chuck stopped and pulled his hand away from Daniela. Casey was scary and Sarah was a wild card to him, but he wasn't spineless enough to let them do something to Ellie. Ellie had a home, a job, and was establishing a family with Devon. Bryce Larkin, of all people, was not going to be the reason she lost everything. He would make sure of that.

"What about my sister?" He interrupted them, making sure that his face was stubborn.

"Nothing," Sarah said quickly, looking away from Casey. "We were just discussing-"

"No, no, no," Chuck objected. He knew what it sounded like to be blown off. "Hold on a second. You have to leave my family and my friends out of this," he told her, frowning. If she didn't listen then his frown was probably going to become something less upset and a little more angry, but Chuck really did not enjoy being angry, and Sarah acted like a semi-reasonable person.

Casey snorted. "We'll see."

Daniela was proud of Chuck for making a law clear, but she had had enough of Casey's attitude. "Hey douchebag," she said, crossing her arms and rolling her shoulders back. "In the last hour, I've had guns aimed at me and a bomb nearly went off in my face. You drag his family into this shitstorm and I swear to God I'll publish everything I learned tonight online."

The look she was leveled with told her that she might have gone a bit too far in terms of her threat. If she had to guess, Casey was torn between reaching down her throat and ripping out her vocal cords and meticulously sawing off each of her fingers until she couldn't type anything.

"You won't have so much as a broken keyboard if I decide you're best kept in a cozy underground cell for national security," he hissed at her condescendingly.

She did what she always did when someone threatened her and she didn't have a relevant comeback: she returned with a startling and violent threat. It knocked people back because they didn't see it coming. "I will literally bite your face off," she snapped.

Interested as he was in seeing who would win, especially now that Casey was looking at Daniela like he was seeing a rabid dog, antagonizing the agents deciding his fate wasn't likely to get him exactly what he wanted. "Stop, stop," Chuck said, putting a hand out on Daniela's arm. She uncrossed hers and put them on her hips instead.

"Look," he said, trying to be diplomatic. "Bryce sent that email to me. I'm the one remembering your secrets. Which means you have to listen to me, both of you." If they wanted his cooperation, they would have to give as well as take. "My family, my friends, you leave all of them alone. That means Ella, too." He touched her again in case she wasn't already in his dossier or target description. "And right now, I'm gonna go home."

Chuck moved his hand down from Daniela's arm to her hand and slipped his fingers into hers. She didn't resist, and even slid her palm against his. As soon as he turned to walk away with her, Casey reached for his arm and grabbed Chuck in a strong vice.

"No, you're not," the NSA agent denied flatly, daring him with his eyes to try again. "Uh-uh."

 _Dare accepted,_ Chuck thought to himself, beginning to get mad. Maybe he had no say about what happened to the secrets in his head, but he wasn't willing to give up all of his choices. If he had asked for any of this, that would be different, but he was innocent. He hadn't done anything to bring this onto himself, and he wasn't going to let Casey walk all over him as if he had.

It helped that he'd seen Daniela get away with more disrespectful words and actions already. He shrugged his shoulder, hard, and pulled his arm out of Casey's grasp. Casey's lips thinned and his glare intensified with displeasure, but he didn't grab onto the techie again.

"You?" He said, pointing at Casey, and then also at Sarah. "You need me."

He walked away, afraid of having his shoulder yanked back, but it didn't happen. Daniela picked up her stride to keep up with his longer steps and gave him a calculating look. She was proud of him for standing up for himself, and glad that he didn't feel quite so terrified of Casey anymore; on the other hand, it sounded like he didn't know what the government was actually capable of doing, and that concerned her. If he thought they had no choice but to give him what he wanted, then she needed to help him understand that that was absolutely not the case. Agencies like the CIA and NSA tended to pick and choose when Constitutional rights were applied – most of the time, they obeyed to avoid incidents, but sometimes… and they had the resources to keep those other times quiet.

Behind them, she heard Casey's terse growl.

 _Yeah,_ she confirmed to herself. _We_ _definitely need to tread lightly until we know what we're dealing with._

* * *

They had agreed to walk towards Echo Park soon after the Westin Bonaventure was out of sight. Daniela didn't really feel like returning to her hotel room alone, and the thought of her returning to any hotel at all ever again after just seeing one almost explode made Chuck feel like he was going to have to rip his hair out. The walk was long, but probably better than a taxi would have been. Daniela didn't want to explain the blood on her arm, which would have been impossible to hide in the light of a car.

His neighborhood was a pretty safe one, and Chuck had lived there for going on five years, Ellie even longer. Knowing he wasn't far from his very familiar bedroom and his much-loved sister had the tension draining out of his body. Every step which brought him closer to home brought him closer to losing every ounce of energy he possessed and just flopping down where he stood to sleep on the ground. The sooner he slept, maybe the sooner he would feel better. In the morning, the events of the night might not seem so awful.

They could have been worse. Daniela could have died. _He_ could have died. Casey was violent enough. The bomb could have gone off. It may not have taken his life, but at the same time, he felt like it had. That changed him. What Bryce had done changed him, and he didn't think it was for the better. How was he supposed to go home like it was just another day at the Buy More?

He knew he wasn't a very good liar, and the prospect of lying to his sister made him feel awful. They didn't keep secrets. If they ruined their relationship with secrets then that was it – no more family. Sure, Ellie had Devon and Chuck had Morgan, but no more of the family they had grown up loving and living with. They were siblings; that was different from a found family.

Chuck started to slow down as his feet became leaden. He was going to have to lie to Ellie. He finally did something right – like, _really_ right – and he couldn't even tell her about it. He couldn't go to her to vent or commiserate or ask for advice. This huge development in his life, this massive, massive thing was just going to have to be hidden. It felt wrong.

"Chuck?" Daniela said his name softly, seeing that he was distracted by his own thoughts. "What is it?"

His feet had stopped moving forward entirely. Daniela turned around to look at him and he ducked his head down to look at the pavement under his sneakers. "I… you know," he started, feeling so overwhelmed. This wasn't something he would normally tell her, but he couldn't tell anyone else. She was his only confidante now. He didn't object to trusting her with his thoughts and feelings – she was his soulmate, after all, and he hoped his friend as well after the last couple of days. He was unhappy that it was being pushed along by the situation, though. "I wish I could tell Ellie that her embarrassing little brother defused a bomb. How many people do you think were in that room?" He asked.

She tilted her head, surveying him thoughtfully. It hurt her feelings to know that he thought of himself as embarrassing. She really enjoyed her time with him, guns and bombs aside. Some bastard threw his life off track, but that wasn't his fault, and not everyone needed to go to college and get a job making big checks. Working in retail as an adult wasn't embarrassing if it was right for him, and from what he'd said about the managership position, he was considering moving up. That meant he was at least thinking about what he had to do to make his life his own.

But wanting to know how many people were in the room… he couldn't start telling Ellie how many lives he saved. That was asking for trouble. "You're not an embarrassment," Daniela promised, touching his arm reassuringly and cupping her palm around his elbow. "And if you tell her, you put her in danger. I'm sorry. That's how it is. The less she knows, the less involved she is, the safer she'll be."

Chuck grimaced when she said the word back to him. _Embarrassment._ He hated thinking down about himself, but sometimes it was hard not to – especially when he had just been told that his college roommate was some bigshot CIA spy, now dead. Even Bryce's death had been impactful, albeit in a negative way.

"I'm going to be thirty in a few years, and I live with my sister." Chuck told her straightforwardly. He had glossed over that a little bit on their first date. "I got expelled from school, no university's gonna let me finish my degree. You-" He stopped, shaking his head. He was talking to a woman who had not one, but _two_ degrees from Columbia and was good enough at what she did to make an independent career. "You're so much cooler, how do you not see this?"

Daniela frowned. "Your worth is not determined by your credentials or living situation, Chuck. You think I'm cool?" She pointed at her own chest. "I haven't eaten three meals a day in _months_ because I can't really afford it." She saved all her money for unexpected costs, like the trip to Los Angeles for a big conference or a broken hard drive. "I have no permanent address because I can't afford that, either." It hadn't bothered her in the past but it felt humiliating to admit out loud. "I don't know how I'm going to stay here, but you and I, we're smart. We'll figure it out. We'll figure it all out, I promise."

Chuck sighed. It was comforting to hear that she didn't have everything lined up and perfect, although he thought that was a totally awful emotional response to her problems. He got the message – not to be so hard on himself. That didn't change that he didn't want to lie to Ellie, and now the choice was to suffer with that on his conscience or put her in danger, which was obviously not a real option.

"I don't think I can go home right now. My head is so – so – ugh." Chuck gestured up to his head with his hands and made fists, unable to articulate how he was feeling. He wasn't even sure. Everything was so fresh and confusing. "I can't think, I'm still – processing, like a computer, and if my user presses one more button I feel like my screen will go black."

Daniela bit her lip, a little disappointed. She had been looking forward to getting inside a warm household and falling asleep on some furniture, but if Chuck needed something else then she was strong enough to let him have that other thing.

Somewhere away from his home and away from people, where they could relax. Hm.

"Well… it's been a long time since I saw the ocean." She lifted her eyebrows in question and tilted her head back to make sure the streetlight would illuminate her face enough for him to see.

* * *

They took a taxi to the beach and Daniela was careful to keep her arm out of sight of the driver. The beach was beautiful. Dani felt better as soon as she heard the ocean waves lapping at the shore on high tide. She hurried onto the sand, eager to feel it between her toes. Chuck laughed a little at her excitement and they picked a spot to sit, close to the water but not close enough to get wet.

It kind of felt like a third date, or at the very least, a post script of their second.

Chuck watched the water move hypnotically. It was so beautiful. The water swept over itself onto the sand and washed away, leaving just dark, wet lines and some occasional sea foam behind. The ocean glittered in the moonlight, and the smoother seashells sparkled. The sound was so repetitive and soft and relaxing that for a long time he just sat with his eyes closed, hugging his knees and listening while the cold breeze from the water rustled his hair.

Daniela watched him occasionally. The water was beautiful but it would always be there, and it wasn't as interesting to her as Chuck. In general, she liked people. She didn't usually trust them, but she liked them. They were puzzles for her to figure out, and Chuck was proving to be a neat one. Soft edges but strong inside, with lots of detail and easy-to-spot patterns and emotions.

When she started to feel creepy for looking at him so much while he rested and got himself together, she began playing with the sand instead. She scooped up handfuls and watched tiredly as the grains trickled through the narrow gaps between her fingers. It was refreshingly chilly against her skin, but soft to the touch. She wanted to press it to her face, but didn't want to lay down and go to sleep on a public beach.

She grew bored of that before too long and looked at Chuck again. His boyish charm was a little undermined by the stress lines across his forehead when he frowned. He opened his eyes not long after she looked at his soft cheek and turned his head to catch her eyes. She blinked at him, raising her chin slightly and trying to read the emotions in his pretty hazel irises.

"So… you're staying," he stated, letting go of his knees. He stretched his legs out in front of him, then bent and turned on the sand to face her.

"I'm staying," Daniela confirmed. She was curious if the CIA would demand it, but whether they did or not, she couldn't leave now. "We're soulmates, I need to stay. And even if we weren't, I don't think Casey or Sarah would actually let me leave. I'm sure I could get away," she added swiftly. She didn't want him to think that she was willing to give up a fight just like that. "But I'm not so sure I could hide well enough not to be dragged back."

That earned her a laugh from Chuck. He pictured Daniela and Sarah in a car, Daniela stuck in the driver's seat with her arms crossed, snapping at Sarah over where she wanted to go. Daniela's face was a little bit perplexed because she hadn't thought she said anything funny.

"I'm sorry," he chuckled, covering his mouth with his hand. She smiled with him. "I'm trying to imagine you and Sarah, uh, fighting over who gets to pick the direction."

She leaned in towards him and gave his shoulder a nudge. It was good that he could still laugh about silly things.

"Wow," he said as he finished laughing, rubbing his hand down his chin. "This must be the _worst_ second date you've ever been on."

"Oh, not even close," she promised him with a smirk. She liked to surprise him.

"Not even – not even close?!" He was definitely surprised. His jaw went slack for a moment and then he argued, "There were guns! And – and – and a bomb that almost went off and killed everyone!"

The writer picked up another big handful of sand and enjoyed the dry rub of tiny particles slipping away. "But, you were a hero and saved the day," she reminded him wisely. That made it much better.

 _"We_ did it," Chuck corrected her, leaning his shoulder towards her until their upper arms touched.

She dropped the rest of her much littler handful. She appreciated the credit, but she hadn't earned it – not for the bomb thing, at least. For keeping him calm, and alive, sure. There had been a little while when it was a really difficult job. "You defused it," she said, giving him another shoulder bump. "That was all you."

"I couldn't have thought without you. Up on that rooftop, nothing was under control, not even my brain." Chuck pointed to his temple with his hand shaped like he was holding a gun, then moved his hand through his hair and ruffled carelessly. "You helped me focus. And then, you're the one who found the bomb first."

"For future reference, when you're looking for someone who doesn't want to stand out, _always_ look at the people in any sort of uniform," she casually advised as if they weren't discussing explosives and how to identify terrorists.

Chuck already disliked how normal this conversation seemed. "I'll be sure to remember that, you know, for the next time there's a bomb crashing my date."

Daniela giggled a little bit and went back to the point. She wanted to prove that she wasn't totally disappointed with how the night had gone. "Okay, so, my date proved to be smart, and brave, and really, really awesome." Chuck didn't say out loud that he had screamed a lot in the car. It was very kind of her to only consider his levels of courage at the hotel. "Oh, and we saw some live music," she added, leaving out how she hadn't really liked it. "That was cool."

He tried to smile. The night was a train wreck, he knew that and so did she. Still… it was a little bit heartwarming that she looked at what happened and saw positive traits of his. She must really like what she saw to be willing to stick around. His very faint smile fell. They knew someone had died over these secrets in his head already.

"You also learned that your other soulmate is…" Chuck looked at his jeans. It was still hard to say. "He's dead."

"And…" Daniela started, stopped, and paused, thinking about it with a heavy heart. She didn't want to cheapen anything that Chuck felt, or absolve Bryce of the blame. No matter how badly she wished he were different, she couldn't ignore facts. It went against every moral scruple and personal philosophy she held. "And that really blows," she settled with, smiling wryly at Chuck. "It really, really does. But… you know… a spy gone rogue makes their own bed," she said, trying to be both delicate and rational. "Or… digs their own grave, which might be more accurate."

Sarah had said that, but Chuck didn't really know what that meant. What did Bryce do so wrong that he deserved to die for it? "That's something else I can't stop thinking about," he told her. Daniela crisscrossed her legs and turned so she was sitting at an angle where she could look at him easier and he met her eyes, the frown pulling on his lips. "Sarah said Bryce was a rogue spy. What does that mean, do you know?"

Ella sighed and he could see it was just as bad as he had inferred. "He went against his commands. Usually, it's a polite way of saying he committed treason… I think it's a safe bet, if he was messing around with government intel."

Chuck swallowed hard. Treason had never seemed like such a scary word before. To think of Bryce intentionally doing that… did he ever really know the man at all? Why did he have to pull Chuck into his screw-ups, and… and why would he think Chuck would have anything to do with treason, anyway?

"Right, well, if he was doing the – the T-word," Chuck said slowly, moving his eyes from place to place. The sand, the ocean, his knee, the dried blood on Daniela's arm, her eyes, back to the sand between them. "And using the secrets to do it… why send them to me?"

He had been wondering ever since Sarah explained. Bryce had never seemed stupid, but sending him the email was just plain dumb. What was he supposed to do with a bunch of coded pictures branded onto his brain?

"What was that for, what did he think I was going to do with them?" Chuck asked, starting to ramble. He couldn't understand any of it, and Daniela would listen. She had said herself that they could still talk about things, even if they were his problems and not hers. "I thought it had to be an accident, he wouldn't _choose_ to send me something like that, especially not if he was breaking the law, but that email was protected with a very specific passcode no one else could have answered. He _meant_ to do that."

Ella was quiet while she thought about it. Chuck didn't really expect for her to give him an answer. How could she? She didn't know Bryce. She barely knew anything that he didn't about anything else. He wanted to get these thoughts off of his chest, although it sucked that the cost of that was to burden her with his concerns. It was done now, so oh well – it was too late to take it back, just like it was too late to un-see those pictures.

Daniela unconsciously controlled her face while she thought about it. She was used to keeping a poker face when she thought because if she let her emotions show, if she wore her heart on her sleeve the way Chuck so sweetly did, then she would have been killed by now. There was no greater tell than expressing an emotion that a cover shouldn't feel.

Bryce wasn't only her soulmate; he was a big part of Chuck's past, too. Maybe the man could offer insight, or maybe not. Either way, it was his life and his brain now in jeopardy, so if she could help him process what the secret agent had done, she felt obliged to try.

"That _is_ interesting…" she hesitantly mused. "He could have sent them to you because he knew you wouldn't understand them, so it was a safe place to send the program." Chuck nodded, following along with her logic. "Which makes sense if he was trying to protect it, but not if he wanted to sell or destroy it." She frowned and reached up to her hair, twisting a brown strand around her finger. "But protecting government knowledge… that doesn't seem like a rogue move." It had already been in the government's hands, anyway. Exactly who would it have needed protecting from?

Chuck squeezed his fingernails into the soft parts of his palm. "It going to my computer sent Casey after me. He tried to kill us with his car! Maybe that was what Bryce wanted," he theorized, looking down. He was upset – devastated, really – to consider that someone for whom he once would have done anything had intentionally tried to have him hurt. "Maybe he was trying to… put out a target. But I can't believe Bryce would do that. Not to me… though I never thought he would do other things he did, either."

He remembered the old Bryce so clearly. Not even the one who had gotten him expelled and given him that dark, closed-off, and angrily judgmental glower when he asked why. Just… the Bryce Larkin he cared so much about, the one who studied Klingon with him after they complained about the Spanish credit requirements, and who spent hours helping him plan and reprogram a nerdy old video game. Daniela should have been hearing about that Bryce, the one she missed out on who had been so great, not about this treasonous stranger that had taken over.

Bryce was dead and there was no point questioning the man he was or what his intentions had been. He should be remembering the good memories and telling Daniela the things about her soulmate that she would actually like to know, not saddling her with this doubt. He couldn't imagine how it felt to learn about a soulmate the way she just had. It was an entire potential relationship completely stripped away and stolen because of his death, piled on top of a horrible truth that he had done something awful. Her perspective that Bryce dug his own proverbial grave was mature and logical, but thinking that way could only last for so long.

"I'm sorry," he apologized. "This is all so – so _dark_ and frustrating and you deserve better than that from him." Five years ago, she would have gotten a lot better from him. He and Bryce had both really looked forward to meeting her. Chuck couldn't speak for Bryce, but he had never stopped.

"No, I just – I'm not upset," the writer reassured him, only knowing after she said it that it was a lie. Her stomach felt tight. "I'm thinking. And the thing is…" _It does really hurt._ Not just because of lost potential, but because what did it say about her for her to be a great match with that man? She went with a different avenue of thought. She wasn't sure how she felt yet and didn't want to jump the sharing gun. "If stealing secrets got him dead, he had to have known that might happen. There are much easier ways to hang a bullseye on someone, _if_ that was the intention." Hitmen for hire started at about forty grand, last she checked.

Oh, that sounded bad even in the solitude of her own brain. She regretted not phrasing it differently to herself. She had never hired a hitman, but this was information she liked to keep up with.

Chuck had a really good point. Bryce gained nothing towards his treason deal by sending the secrets to Chuck, who didn't even know what they were. Maybe he had meant for Chuck to have them for safekeeping, or use his email like a drop-box for a criminal partner, but there were two flaws in that theory. First, if he didn't very specifically want Chuck to see them, then why would the passcode have been tailored for his old friend? Second, an email left a paper trail, presumably how Casey found Chuck to begin with. That wasn't a safe way to transport files.

So trying to hurt Chuck, or make him an unwitting accomplice, just didn't make sense in terms of motive or methods. Protecting the intelligence would have made more sense, but again, she had to question why Bryce would send government intelligence to Chuck instead of to someone he trusted who would actually know what they were, or who was qualified to be in possession of them.

No theory held any water. She hated that. "It doesn't line up," she said after a minute. "I'm beginning to think there's a piece to the story we don't have." She couldn't even begin to guess at what it might be, but she was tentatively willing to accept that it might exist. Or else Sarah and Casey lied to them at some point, which was also a totally real possibility.

"I just wish I knew, you know?" Chuck said quietly. "I wish I could talk to him and ask why me. Yesterday I was making eleven bucks an hour fixing computers; now I have one in my _brain_ , and I can't figure out why Bryce did this, why he chose me."

Daniela leaned against his shoulder, slowly allowing more of her weight to lay on his side. "I just wish I could talk to him," she admitted longingly. "Just for a couple minutes."

She had no idea what she would ask. She'd probably slap him, for damn sure. Although punching him in the face might be more satisfying. Scratch that, no, he deserved a kick in the balls. Wait – maybe punching him in the face and simultaneously kicking him in the balls was the way to go.

But she didn't want a face-to-face just for the sake of assaulting him (even if he did have it coming). For some reason, they were supposed to be together. Maybe not romantically, maybe not constantly, but they were supposed to have an important and time-enduring bond, and she wanted desperately to know why. If she could have just a couple of minutes with him, to not-quite-interrogate him the way she had Chuck… maybe she could have begun to understand.

Chuck didn't have a response. It kept slipping his mind that Daniela had never even gotten the chance to form an opinion of Bryce for herself. He had at least been fortunate enough to meet his old friend; that relationship had unexpectedly ended, and now his feelings about Bryce were more murky and confused than ever. Despite all of that, he knew for sure that he was grateful he had gotten the opportunity to make his own opinions of Bryce and be friends for the time he had. If he had to choose between his expulsion versus getting his degree but never having met Bryce, he would have to seriously think about it. For more than three years, Bryce had been Chuck's best friend.

His heart hurt for his soulmate, leaning into his arm and leeching some heat from his shirt. Maybe Bryce's death was going to hurt him more, but Chuck was a firm believer that it was 'better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all', or however the saying went.

They must have been sitting on the beach for hours, because the sky was beginning to lighten. It was so gradual that Chuck hadn't noticed until he had been looking away from the waves for a while that he could see more details. He was starting to lose circulation in the hand that he was leaning on. He didn't dare move it because Daniela was resting against that arm.

The sky was a dark blue, almost a purple color near the horizon, when the first hint of sunlight teased over the gleaming water. "I can't believe we've been here for so long," Daniela commented.

"It doesn't seem like we've been here long enough," Chuck said back. He wanted to take off his watch and hurl it out for the fish.

How was he supposed to go back to another shift at the Buy More after everything that had happened? He wanted to stay on the beach forever. If that wasn't an option, then a good alternative would be to go home with Daniela and sleep for a few days. The Buy More was nowhere on the list.

Daniela looked at her phone again for the time. It was early. They had a few hours before they absolutely needed to move.

"Are you ready to go back to the real world yet?" She asked with patience and compassion. She recognized someone hiding from reality when she saw it.

Chuck reflected on how amazing it was for someone to be able to just hear a few words and look at him for a few minutes and know how he felt and what he needed. Because she didn't indicate that she wanted to go, either, he shook his head, repositioned to be more comfortable, and went back to hugging his knees while staring at the ocean.

* * *

Daniela was able to give Chuck another hour of mostly wakeful companionship before the noise in the background suddenly changed. She sat up straight to stretch her back and moved her jaw in a circle after yawning.

"I hate to tell you, but the engine in the lot just turned off. We have company." she said, and she really did. Chuck deserved as much time as he needed. "Sarah's been here since right after we got here." It was very considerate of the CIA agent to give them privacy, but Daniela was envious that the agent might have gotten to take a nap in the car.

"What?" Chuck twisted to look over his shoulder. They couldn't see the parking lot from where they were sitting, and Daniela hadn't heard a car door yet. There wasn't any Sarah to overhear or interrupt, yet. "How did you even notice that?" Chuck asked after listening to the engine-less quiet.

"The silver Porsche that tailed our taxi and sat there all night was a little too coincidental," Daniela explained. She had been listening for the car to either park or move all night. It would have been extremely unnerving if she didn't already have a very good guess at whose it was.

Chuck looked at Daniela again. His expression was thoughtful and inquisitive, and he was trying to look into her eyes as if he could bore straight through them and into her skull. "Open book?" He asked.

"Mm." She planned to keep that promise, but she did not expect to enjoy it.

"Why are you like this?" Chuck asked, unable to help sounding a little bit sad. He didn't want his soulmate to be like Sarah. No offense to Sarah, but he didn't even want to try to imagine what she had been through to be the kind of person who could knife a guy or total a car with someone still inside it and not even pause.

"This?" Daniela had an idea of what he was getting at, but wanted some more specificity so she didn't have to show her entire hand.

Chuck didn't look away from her. He didn't want to miss anything from the explanation he was dying to hear (in hindsight, maybe not a great choice of words). "You assumed Casey was chasing you even before you knew who he was. You saw we were followed when I didn't notice, twice. How?"

Daniela started to move her head away before she caught herself. She had promised herself and Chuck that she would be truthful when he had questions, even though it went against her habits and safety-based rationale. "I chose to specialize my journalism in human rights and violent crime," she informed him reluctantly. "What that means for me is that my 'office' is territories where human rights are put at risk by sociopolitical factors. Those places, the people whose operations are threatened – they're the type to hold grudges. I have to watch out for myself, so I'm hyper-vigilant." The journalist very intentionally left out how she became that way. Her post-traumatic stress was not something she wanted to wave in the air so soon.

"Whoa," Chuck breathed, wrapping his head around it. He looked away and down his legs, wiggling his bare feet in the sun-warming sand. "So you're like a freelance spy."

Daniela didn't even laugh. "No, don't call me a spy." She had been called a lot of things, but spy had never made the list, and she wanted it to stay that way. "I'm an investigator. Sunday, your birthday, I arrived in the States from the Middle East. I've spent the last three months following leads and gathering information on organ trafficking, debt bondage, and the spread of radical Islamism. Sometimes I lie about who I am to do so," she admitted in the spirit of full disclosure. "But that's for my safety."

Chuck was thinking hard about it and trying to fit the new information in with what he already knew about Daniela, hoping there weren't large inconsistencies. He really didn't want his soulmate to have lied to him. Thankfully, none came to mind. It actually explained a lot – why she didn't talk much about her job, even though she was clearly passionate about it, and how come she was always scanning rooms and paying attention to the people around her. The fact that she put herself in danger to investigate how other people were doing was really admirable, but a little bit scary. He reminded himself that she had said she'd stay in Los Angeles. At least for a while, maybe he wouldn't have to be so nervous about those grudges she mentioned.

His body relaxed. She saw in his face when Chuck had accepted what she told him, and she smiled with relief. "Why didn't you just tell me that when we met?" He asked her, honestly wanting to know. He wasn't mad, but that was a fantastic icebreaker.

"People react a lot of different ways to what I do," she told him with a forced half-smile. That NYPD detective had only gone shady and weird after she told him what she did. "I guess I was worried that if I told you, you might judge our potential based on whether or not you agreed with my lifestyle instead of whether or not you thought you could like me."

The idea that someone thought Chuck might be turning them down because of a badass and heroic career made him grin and almost laugh. "I already like you very, very much," he assured her.

"The feeling is mutual," she responded with a smile. She was much happier having told him since it hadn't blown up massively in her face. She glanced at his cute grin and then back up to his eyes. "Do you want to kiss?" She offered, immediately hearing how weird it sounded. Nevertheless, she pushed forward. She wanted to feel that smile under her lips. "I could be way off, but I feel like we're at that point."

Chuck laughed at her candidness. He did like to kiss, and he did feel like he could probably kiss Daniela and it wouldn't feel strange. It felt like they had been on more than two dates, perhaps because of the intense emotional ordeal they had survived together.

"Yeah," he said, beaming and nodding. "Yeah, I'd like to kiss you, I think that sounds nice."

The brunette woman leaned in towards him, her eyes moving back to his mouth. He self-consciously licked his lips. Her eyes darted back up to his as he moved a little closer to physically give consent, dipping his head within her reach. Daniela closed the distance more confidently and kissed him.

His lips were chapped and dry, but very soft, and his kiss was very gentle. Daniela could get used to it easily. The man lifted his large hand up to her cheek, nudging his fingers underneath the layers of her hair, and she pressed into the kiss a little more firmly. It was unfair that he just did that when she hadn't even told him how much she loved having her partner's hand in her hair while she was kissed. Chuck slowly moved his palm across her cheek and past her ear, burying his fingers through her thick, tangled locks, until his hand was cradling the back of her head.

They parted after a few seconds. Although Daniela had been the one to end their hugs, Chuck was the one who leaned away from the kiss. His head felt too light, but that was probably because he was so happy. He smiled at Ella so widely his face hurt.

"On a beach," he said, tipping his head down again. Daniela leaned her head towards his until their foreheads touched, and he slipped his hand out of her hair and down her back. "Very romantic," he teased.

The writer laughed a little. She had never denied that romance made her heart speed up. A car door opened and shut from the parking lot and Chuck's expression turned wistful as if he wanted to pretend not to have heard. As if he wanted to believe they were somewhere else, safe, just the two of them with nothing wrong. She met his eyes and tried to convey silent reassurance. Like she had said, they were a pair of very smart people. They would figure it out and be okay.

As he listened for Sarah, Chuck heard her footsteps change tone when she stepped onto the sandy beach and pulled away from Daniela. He was proud she felt so highly of him. It wasn't that he didn't want Sarah to see he was with the writer; his relationship to his soulmate was so new that he wanted to protect it. He wasn't sure he could trust Sarah. He wanted to, after she had gotten them away from Casey and worked to stop the NSA from taking him who knew where, but he couldn't forget that she had lied to him and tried to take him on a date because of her job. If he hadn't met Daniela, he probably would have gone out with Sarah, and then he would have really had his feelings hurt by the pretenses.

Daniela straightened her legs to look out at the ocean, aware of Chuck doing almost the same thing. They made a little bit of space between them, but not enough for a third person to shove themselves in the middle. Sarah paused briefly, picking up both of her feet in turn and slipping off her nice shoes, then walked to Chuck's other side and sat down on the sand a respectable foot away.

Chuck wished she hadn't showed up. This was supposed to be his time to recuperate. He wanted Daniela there, but not a CIA agent. He briefly entertained the fantasy of booking tickets to the first destination he could and running away with his soulmate until the CIA and the NSA forgot about him entirely.

"There's nowhere I can run, is there?" He asked, resigned.

"Not from us," Sarah answered, giving him a sad smile. "I'm sorry this is happening to you, Chuck."

"What are you going to do with us?" Casey's threat to shove Daniela in what sounded like a prison cell frightened him. "What happens now?"

"For now, you go back to your own life," Sarah instructed calmingly. Daniela looked around Chuck's shoulders at the blonde's face. She was trying to be soothing. "We'll protect you, and you'll work with us."

"And me?" She asked. "I know they exist, but it's not like I know what they are." Even knowing where the government's coded intelligence was put her in the line of fire, and made her a potential liability in their eyes.

Sarah was more careful with what she said, which instantly made Daniela more critical. If she had to think about it more, then it wasn't as simple as she was going to make it sound.

"We'd like you to stay in the area. Not a lot of people can get the better of Casey like you did," Sarah remarked, looking up and shooting Daniela an amused half-smile which didn't move the journalist. She was too smart to blindly let Sarah appeal to her pride. "I talked to my superiors," Sarah added, turning more serious when she saw the stony look on Dani's face. "Our agencies are willing to make compromises. We don't want to pull either of you away from your lives, but what happened today could happen again. You could save lives, and you could be in danger."

"Stay close for our benefit and for yours. You can protect us and you can draw from the deck when you need the extra hand." Daniela translated more accurately. The traveler wanted Chuck to hear what Sarah wasn't saying. "And we all pretend that _we_ actually have a choice that matters."

Sarah tactfully chose not to respond, instead looking out towards the ocean. The sea was getting harder to look at as it reflected more sunlight. The silence was enough of a confirmation for Daniela, who nodded shortly in understanding. For the time being, she was stuck in Los Angeles, no matter what she wanted.

Chuck knew he didn't like that his soulmate – or anyone, for that matter – wasn't allowed to go where they pleased. Daniela had said herself that this was her first time in Burbank; permanent address or no, this wasn't even close to a home for her, and now she didn't get to leave.

"And my sister, and friends, are they in danger?" He asked, his chest aching. If Ellie, Morgan, Awesome, or even any of the other people in his life were hurt because of him…

Sarah put a hand onto the heated and dry sand between them. "Tell them nothing to keep them safe," she reiterated something she had said before. Chuck steeled himself to do that, but it was a lot to ask. It was a lot more than conveniently forgetting to tell his best friend that Daniela was Daniela _Harris_ for the sake of keeping his first few dates Morgan-free. "I need you to do one more thing for me."

Chuck looked at Sarah warily and reached with his other hand for Daniela's. He missed the mark because he wasn't looking, but his fingers touched the tips of hers and he settled his hand there. "Yeah?" He wasn't sure he was going to like what came next.

Sarah leaned towards him, her expression open, honest, and pleading. "Trust me, Chuck," she said.

Chuck was a trusting person, but she was asking for him to disregard the lies she had already told. He didn't think she could fake that kind of earnest desire to help, but he hadn't thought that Bryce could be a spy, either, or that sweet Sarah could put a knife through someone's arm. Just like at the Large Mart, what he could see wasn't always what was real.

He tried to force a smile. He was glad that it didn't come easy to him. Being unable to fully trust what he saw from Sarah was terrifying on a very deep level. If there were more people even remotely as violent as Casey who wanted the information locked in his head, Sarah held his life and the lives of his family in her hands. He might have to live with that awful uncertainty whenever he saw her, but he was glad that he wasn't the kind of person who was going to make Sarah feel the same way.

* * *

The last thing Chuck did was sign his name on the job application. Before putting down the pen, he looked over the entire paper. Every box was filled in with his best handwriting in the most accurate and concise way possible. He had been working on filling it out for almost an hour. Lester stole Chuck's pen out of his hand with a flourish and dramatically put it down on the Nerd Herd counter.

"Well," the supervisor said, picking up the single page and taking a deep breath. "Wish me luck." The one real good thing that had come from the night prior was that he now knew he couldn't afford to continue living stagnantly. If he stayed right where he was forever, then one day something horrible might happen and he would never have had the chance to try something new.

He started towards Big Mike's office to submit his application, telling himself that it wasn't a big deal. If the world didn't end when he became a human computer at the mercy of the government, it certainly wasn't going to end if he was turned down for a low-level management job.

Loud and dramatic music played loudly over the speakers. Chuck suspected it was one of his friends emphasizing a moment which felt really trivial compared to the bomb in the hotel. Harry passed him in the aisle. The salesman looked at him long enough to make a very aggressive gesture that he was keeping his eyes on Chuck and slammed hard into Chuck's shoulder. The techie grimaced when he saw it coming, but wasn't graceful enough to move out of the way.

As he walked past a TV speaker system on display, he turned his head to Morgan, whose fingers were still on the volume dial. The TV played a high-resolution video of a coral reef. His friend hastily twisted the dial until it was almost muted and moved his hands awkwardly.

"Sorry, man," he apologized. "Go get 'em."

Big Mike's office was just off of the sales floor, but the door was almost always closed because he didn't like to interact with customers. Chuck knocked before walking in. His boss was writing something vigorously but his forearm was covering most of the page from Chuck's view. Without saying anything, his boss lifted his hand and stabbed the top of a small paper filing rack on the corner of his desk. Harry's application was already sitting at the top of the pile. Chuck put his application down quietly, not wanting to talk and annoy his boss.

He had almost left the office when Big Mike grunted loudly to stop him. "Didn't think you'd apply."

Chuck turned away from the door and clasped his hands in front of him. "Well, uh, I think I'm ready for this, Big Mike." He had rehearsed in his head a couple of times and was pretty sure he remembered most of it. "And for what it means – responsibility, decisive leadership-"

"Save it for the interview," the boss cut him off without looking up. "Now go train the new guy."

"Okie dokie," Chuck agreed quickly, leaving hastily.

The store hadn't had a new Nerd Herder in a while. Technically, Lester had quit at some point last year but came back less than a week later after some get-rich-quick plan had abysmally failed. Because no one had seriously thought it would work, the paperwork had moved slowly and hadn't been processed by the time he came back.

Chuck looked around for someone new but the only three white shirts were already at the Nerd Herd desk. He started to look back towards the front of the store when he saw Casey standing against one of the shelving units by home appliances in the green sales associate shirt, complete with a nametag and everything. The detestation Casey felt was visible in his eyes even as he lifted a hand from his belt to wave at Chuck in a mimicry of friendliness.

 _No, no, no, no, no._ He had to go to work every day with someone who had hit him with a car not once, not twice, not even three times, but _four times total?_

He looked around for Morgan or Harry. One of the other salesmen could 'train' Casey for his new job. Chuck wasn't a green shirt, anyway. While looking for one of the other employees, he spotted Sarah, wearing a short denim dress and carrying a little shopping basket over her arm. Chuck's body kept walking but his brain felt like someone had dumped ice water on it.

Sarah walked past him and turned to another aisle, browsing over merchandise. Her eyes flashed up and she gave him a small, secretive smile before looking back down. Chuck gulped and looked away from her face, ending up with his eyes on her hands. She had a pretty blue stone ring on her right hand.

The visions came faster than they had at first. _Bird lines grid globe map eye horse heartrate graph man Sphynx yellow rose mirror dive aim fight gun kick trade hat woman grey hand gun Sarah gun flash mockingbird._

Chuck did freeze in place this time. The last flash of images he saw looked like rapid still frames from a video camera in which Sarah – wearing the same ring he had just seen on her hand – fought off and executed two men in bulky clothing, then went right up to the camera and shot the lens.

A hand touched his back and gently moved around to his side before dropping off of him. Daniela passed from behind him, giving him a comforting smile when she saw the fearful panic on his face. She was learning to recognize when he froze like that and was reasonably confident that, whatever information Sarah had just inadvertently triggered, it wasn't pleasant.

"We'll figure it out," she reminded him quietly, looking wearily at the top of Sarah's blonde hair on the other side of the shelf.

Chuck stared at the waves in Daniela's brown hair, which triggered nothing. She didn't scare him. She didn't have a bloody past that he was going to accidentally uncover just by looking at her.

"Don't freak out," he whispered bracingly.

* * *

**A/N: This concludes the pilot/introduction and is all that I am prepared to publish until I have a significantly larger part of the story written. The responses to my writing, and to my OC, have been very positive, which makes me very happy to see (if they were negative then I would have known to tweak and rewrite her before continuing). Thank you to everyone who has read and reviewed. I hope to entertain you again in the future when I finish this story and have more chapters to upload.**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I have a couple of notes I'd like to share.
> 
> 1\. This is the first story I've ever published that uses a third-person voice. For simplicity, I'm sticking to third-person between Chuck and Daniela. I think it went well, but if you disagree, please drop me a line with some constructive criticism.
> 
> 2\. I've written a soulmate AU story before for another fandom (White Collar) - I'm a sucker for them, so I'm doing it again, although this time I'm using a different trope for the same concept to make it a little different.
> 
> 3\. This is just for me to share what I'm working on at the moment. I have several chapters written, but much of the story is still in early stages. I'm very excited, though, and I wanted to share what I have so far. This is the only chapter I plan on posting for quite a while so that I can continue writing the story and come close to finishing it without feeling the pressure of an updating schedule.
> 
> 4\. The title may be subject to change when I complete the story and begin publishing in full.
> 
> If you enjoyed, please leave a review! They make my day!


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